


The Three-Body Problem

by AnotherSpoonyBard



Series: Chaos Theory [3]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chaos Theory AU, Character Study, Coming of Age, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Shin'o Academy, Sisterhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-18 06:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 64,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7303879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnotherSpoonyBard/pseuds/AnotherSpoonyBard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In physics, the solution to a three-body problem uses an initial set of data that specifies the positions, masses and velocities of three bodies at some particular point in time to determine their motions, in accordance with the laws of classical mechanics.</p><p>Three people cross paths, brought to the same place at the same time for three different reasons. They aren't moving at the same rate, they aren't going in the same direction. And yet the convergence means more than any of them would have expected.</p><p>In which Ishida and the Kurosaki twins enroll in Shin'ō Academy, and the spectre of Sōsuke Aizen looms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. September

**Author's Note:**

> Here be the direct sequel to _The Butterfly Effect_. I recommend reading that one first, but I suspect this will be _mostly_ comprehensible even if you don't.

“ _What_?”

“You heard me.” Urahara’s voice practically _dripped_ with his amusement. He sat casually on the basement’s floor, Benihime beside him and his arms tucked into his sleeves. 

Uryū half-sat, half-fell into seiza. He knew Urahara wouldn’t just make a suggestion like that without a very good reason. And if they really were going to work together in all this, that explanation would be forthcoming, if he asked the right questions. “Why are you suggesting it in the first place? You can’t possibly believe they’d consent to it.”

The shopkeeper leaned back as Yoruichi came to sit beside him, folding herself into a crosslegged position. Their knees were an inch or two apart, at most. Placing his shoulderblades against the rock protrusion behind him, he shrugged. “Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t. But you know, tradition is important in Soul Society, and if you can pass the test, tradition demands that you be taught. Not even the Central 46 can change that, and I’m not sure they’d want to.”

Uryū fixed him with a flat look, fingertips finding the nosepiece of his glasses. “You think they _want_ me to enroll in Shin’ō Academy? Me.” He settled the spectacles higher on his bridge, letting the absurdity of the assertion speak for itself.

Apparently, Urahara didn’t find it half as outlandish. “I don’t think they’ve thought about it, particularly, but they’d jump on the opportunity, yes.” He rubbed at his stubble with callused fingers, producing a soft rasping sound. 

“Why? I broke into the Seireitei and helped free a prisoner slated for execution. Even if the results were good, they can’t think I’m shinigami material.” He nearly shuddered at the thought himself, but that was for a different part of this argument. 

Urahara rolled his head to the side, giving Yoruichi a look that Uryū could not interpret. 

Yoruichi herself had no such trouble. “That’s true enough, but only to a point. Think about it this way, Ishida. Suppose you’re in charge of a large body of soldiers, an army for a purpose you believe in to your very core. Recently, so recently it still stings, several people made a mockery of your way of doing things, proving in the space of days that your security measures are ineffective, your top officers are dangerously fallible, and there are free elements out there in the world powerful enough to pose a legitimate threat to everything you care about.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, ponytail swishing as she shook her head. “It wasn’t just the ryoka. It was Aizen, too. The most chaotic upheaval in the structure of your organization in at least a hundred years. What’s your first priority after something like that happens?”

Uryū frowned. He’d never belonged to such a large group, and it was difficult to conceive of constantly thinking on that one scale, but she wouldn’t have asked the question if she didn’t think he could answer. “I’d want…” The frown deepened. Aizen, obviously. He needed to be brought down. But something else had to happen first, maybe. “I’d need to regain stability somehow. If I was going to be able to do anything else, I’d need to make sure what was left was still functional.”

“Exactly.” Urahara dipped his head once, eyes keen. “And the Soul Society’s understanding of stability is _control_. They can’t control Aizen right now, obviously, but…”

It dawned on him quite suddenly. “But if they thought they could control me, they would.”

Urahara chuckled. “Of course they would. You’re quite popular, I hear. People want to know about the ryoka who broke into the Sereitei, and while I’m sure there’s been plenty of speculation about the two former captains in the group, it’s not every day some member of a supposedly-exterminated tribe of humans shoots himself into the heart of Soul Society with a cannon and takes down one of its most famous captains.”

Uryū opened his mouth to protest the characterization of the events, but then realized that, speaking in strict and literal terms, that was exactly what he’d done. “…I had help,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Of course. And it’s better if you don’t let yourself get a big head about it. But you did accomplish something any reasonable person would have thought was impossible.” Urahara placed a subtle emphasis on the word _reasonable_ that Uryū could only read as mocking. 

He sighed heavily. “Fine. I suppose I can understand why no one would stop it if I tried to enter the academy. But you still haven’t told me why I _should_.”

Two sets of eyes, one silver and one gold, stared at him long enough he started to feel uncomfortable. 

Clearly, he was meant to figure that one out on his own. Part of him was glad they expected him to be able to. The other part just wished they’d save him the trouble. Uryū glanced down, tapping a staccato pattern on his knee with the fingers of his left hand. He pieced together the information at his disposal: Yoruichi’s mention of giving him a ‘break.’ The apparent understanding that he still had a role to play in whatever would happen with Aizen. His own _desire_ to have a role in it, something which only sort of surprised him. His current and irreversible lack of power. 

A conversation with Hanatarō, and another with Unohana-taichō.

“I have reiryoku,” he said at last, the words heavy on his tongue. “And the place where anyone with reiryoku goes to learn what to do with it is Shin’ō.” 

He looked up, to find that Yoruichi was grinning, and even Urahara wore a subtle smile. 

“But,” Uryū amended quickly, “the two of you could just as easily teach me. Yoruichi _just said_ there’s no one better to teach me _shunpō_ than her. Why should I go there instead of staying here?” Advocating for one set of shinigami teachers over another was really splitting hairs, but at least they were exiles, and his friends. They wouldn’t try and shove obedience to the Seireitei and the Central 46 down his throat. They wouldn’t know what he was and hate him for it. 

Urahara’s expression sobered, and he blinked slowly. When he spoke, it was with unusual solemnity. “That’s true, with one major exception,” he said, the words slow. 

“Not even we can get you a zanpakutō.”

* * *

Yuzu was tugging at her clothes again.

Karin really wanted to tell her not to do it, because her sister’s nervousness was making _her_ feel nervous, too, and that was the last thing she wanted to deal with right now. But Yuzu didn’t work like that—just telling her not to worry about it would probably only make her worry more, so Karin tried to distract them both instead. 

“There sure are a lot of people here,” she said, crossing her arms and scanning the crowd. 

There was a little bit of everyone, apparently. They stayed in clusters, though. The noble kids with their stewards or whoever was escorting them here were half a dozen tiny little knots, while the Rukongai people formed much looser, larger globs, from least to most holes in their clothes, it seemed like. A lot of them had the look of the half-starved: sunken cheeks, drawn faces, wary body language. Like a bunch of stray dogs, towards the back. 

Karin preferred a stray dog to a shih tzu, though. 

“There’s no way they’ll take everyone, is there?” Yuzu asked, her mouth turned down and eyes fixed on the people from the lower districts. She’d stopped pulling, but her fingers were bunched in the fabric of her yukata. 

Karin sighed. “Nope. Too many people, not enough spots.”

“Even though there’s a war coming?” Yuzu’s eyes swung back towards her.

She shrugged, tipping back on her heels until she felt the rough press of bark from the tree behind her through the fabric of her gi. “Even with that, they’re not gonna care about a few kids with almost no reiryoku. If anything, they’ll be stricter, so they can throw more energy into training people who might be strong enough in time to do something useful.” 

Everyone knew that they had eight years left, which meant that this year’s academy class would be one of the last to have a full six-year course before things got bad. Karin clicked her tongue against her teeth and unfolded her arms, scratching her cheek. 

“Guess we gotta get in line. Have you seen Dad?” It was never good to lose track of the old bastard. 

“He said he’d be waiting for us nearby. I think he didn’t want to cause a—”

Yuzu was cut off by a shout from somewhere to their left. Both girls turned to face it, Karin taking half a step in front of her sister. 

It didn’t take long for the shouting to become a full-blown commotion, and Karin wondered if someone hadn’t spotted the geezer after all. “Come on, Yuzu… let’s go get him out of there.”

Their father, big idiot that he was, would never do something like force his way out of a crowd, but Karin had no such compunctions. With Yuzu following close behind, she started to move people aside, mostly with her elbows and shoulders, forcing the two of them to the front edge of the crowd. 

“What the—?”

People were in fact gathering to get a look at someone, but it wasn’t their old man at all. Instead, it was some skinny guy in mostly white, wearing glasses and a scowl that impressed even her. He looked kind of familiar, though…

“Ishida-san!” Yuzu called from behind her, and Karin turned back over her shoulder to see her sister wave a frantic hand at the person in question. Taking a second look at him, she had to agree. This was definitely that kid who’d broken into the Seireitei with their dad—but what the hell was he doing _here_?

Karin decided it really didn’t matter much. “Hey, give him some space, morons!” She threw a few more elbows to make room, and Yuzu slipped in under her, grabbing Ishida’s sleeve and pulling him through the opening Karin had created. Someone at the other side of the crowd was trying to disperse it; probably one of the exam officers, but they got away before he reached them, ducking into a nearby alley. 

“Are you okay, Ishida-san?” Yuzu asked, while Karin glared out the alleyway, deciding that they hadn’t been followed. Pretty much everyone was going back to where they’d been, but no few clusters were now deep in conversation, heads bowed. The expressions ranged from mild interest to excitement to some outright hostility, but that didn’t surprise her. 

“Er… yes, thank you, Yuzu-san.” Karin turned her back to the crowd, watching Ishida brush off his sleeves with a distinct air of the uncomfortable. 

“If you didn’t want to get gawked at, you probably shouldn’t have worn the outfit that says ‘look at me, I’m a Quincy,’” she pointed out flatly. 

Ishida grimaced. “I… hadn’t anticipated this level of recognition,” he admitted, his face coloring slightly. 

“Dude, you’re famous here. Like… really famous. They did a whole issue on the ryoka in the Seireitei’s newspaper thing. Bootleg copies of that make it out into the Rukongai all the time.” 

“Though in fairness, the pictures they have are kind of bad. You’ll probably be okay in the future if you wear a different color.” Yuzu offered a smile, but it didn’t seem to do much to put Ishida to rights. 

He looked down at himself, his expression flattening out until Karin couldn’t tell what he was thinking. 

“I’m not ashamed,” he said quietly, and Karin blinked. 

Yuzu backpedaled. “I didn’t mean to imply that you should be,” she said quickly. “It’s just… unless you want _that_ kind of attention everywhere you go, you might want to think about it, is all.”

He appeared to consider that, then nodded. “I suppose if I pass the exams, I’ll have to wear a uniform anyway.”

“Wait. You’re here to take the _exams_?” Karin looked at him with raised brows. He’d sounded barely tolerant of the idea of the academy’s _existence_ last time they’d talked about it. 

“…Yes.” 

She had a feeling she wasn’t going to get much more out of him than that at this point. 

Yuzu chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Do you have an exam number yet?”

“A what? I just got here—Yoruichi didn’t really tell me anything about—”

“Did I hear someone call my name?”

All three of them glanced up at the slightly-muffled masculine voice, and Karin immediately spotted the black cat poking its head over the side of the roof overhang above them. 

Yoruichi had something in her mouth; upon closer inspection it looked like one of the number chips Karin and Yuzu had retrieved from the exam registration desk a while ago. 

“Catch, Ishida.”

The object fell, turning around in the air and glinting in the sunlight for half a second before he snatched it out of the air, opening his hand and staring down at it. 

135—he was about fifty people after her and Yuzu. 

“I went ahead and registered while you had your little meet and greet with your fans.” She jumped down from her spot on the roof, landing lightly on his shoulder, apparently completely unaffected by the fact that he was trying to set her on fire with his eyes.

“You could have warned me about that.”

“And spoil the fun of watching you get mobbed? Not likely.”

Ishida sighed deeply, then turned to Karin. “Any idea what the exams entail?”

She shook her head, rippling her short ponytail with the motion. “Nope. Apparently it’s some big secret, because dad wouldn’t tell us either.” And he’d _gone_ to the academy, the jerk. 

Everyone turned to Yoruichi, who took that as her cue to hop from Ishida’s shoulder to the ground. “I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise,” she said lightly, swishing her tail. “I’m just going to go see Isshin. Come find us when you’re all done, okay?”

* * *

“Number 76, please.”

Yuzu sucked in a deep breath. They’d called Karin in a couple of minutes ago, but she still hadn’t emerged from her examination, and 76 was Yuzu’s number. Swallowing, she got to her feet, chewing her lip. 

Glancing back towards Ishida, who had elected _not_ to stand in the orderly line that had formed, she held up her token. “Guess I’m being called.”

He blinked at her, then nodded. “You’ll do fine.”

She didn’t ask him how he knew that, accepting the gesture for what it was. “I’ll see you soon, Ishida-san.” Turning from him, she hurried towards the long booth where the examination officials sat, approaching the one who’d called for her and handing over her polished wooden token. 

The man added it to a box of them with a clink, making a note on his clipboard, then glanced up at her. “Inside, to the left. The room marked four.” 

Yuzu, disinclined to ask any more questions of someone so brusque, skittered past the booth and inside the building it was set up in front of. There was only one testing location that she knew of, and it was here, in the eighth district of the Rukongai. This one unassuming building had been the first step on countless journeys to the Seireitei and the Gotei 13. And the last step on many, many more than that. 

She was probably imagining the mild feeling of foreboding that came over her as soon as she stepped across the threshold, but the shakiness of her breaths and the uncomfortable stirring in her stomach were very real. Taking the path to the left, she counted the doors until she came to the one marked ‘four.’ 

There was no one standing outside it, and the door was shut. 

Tentatively, she raised her hand to knock, only to have it slide open in front of her closed fist. A tall woman stood behind it, tipping her head to look down her nose at Yuzu. She wore bandage-wraps from her knuckles to her elbows, and a sleeveless version of the standard shihakushō. Her brown hair was tied into a tail high on her head, but thick enough that strands of it splashed over her shoulders anyway, doing nothing to soften the coarse lines of her face, nor the completely-obvious skepticism in her expression. 

She stepped aside though, gesturing with one hand for Yuzu to enter. 

There were two tables set up in the room, one longer than the other. In front was the shorter one, and it was low to the ground, a cushion resting before it and what looked like an ordinary sword on top, held up with a small display stand. Behind that by half a dozen feet and elevated was the second table. Two other people sat there, a mild-looking man with an eyepatch and a woman with no discernible expression and a fastidiously-neat bun. 

The first woman moved back to lean against the examiners’ table, crossing her arms over her chest. “Sit,” she said crisply, and Yuzu could only assume she meant at the cushion in front of the first table, so she took a few steps forward and lowered herself into seiza. 

“What’s your name?” asked the man with the eyepatch, a brush poised above the stack of paper in front of him. 

“Yuzuki Kurosaki, sir,” she replied, using the more formal version of her name. She somehow doubted they were interested in what she went by.

Both he and the second woman made a note, and then the first lady spoke. 

“Well, Kurosaki-kun, the exam is pretty simple. If you pass the first part, we give you the second one. Start by touching that asauchi there.”

Touching it? Yuzu suppressed a small frown, but obeyed, reaching forward very carefully and extending a single index finger, which she laid carefully on the tsuba of the sword. 

The result was instantaneous. She felt something being _pulled_ out of her, and her whole body jerked forward slightly. A flare of light forced her to shut her eyes, but she didn’t break contact with the blade, fairly certain that she couldn’t have even if she’d tried. 

After a few seconds, the pulling sensation ceased, and she felt oddly drained, like all her parts were too heavy. Blinking her eyes open, she gasped when she laid eyes on the blade. It had been a standard katana a few seconds ago, but now she was looking at a tantō, the blade of which was slightly shorter than her forearm. The hilt’s wrapping had changed color to a saturated violet; the metal parts were all silver-looking, including the tsuba, which had a six-pointed shape that reminded her strongly of petals.

She took her finger from it quickly, looking with wide eyes up at the examiners. The man was smiling slightly, and the woman with the bun nodded once, both taking notes still. The woman in the center cocked her head, a birdlike gesture, then shrugged. 

“Nice work. Stand up and c’mere for a second.”

Yuzu scrambled to comply, clambering to her feet and giving the table a wide berth on the way to stand in front of the examiners. She couldn’t help but glance back at the tantō, though. 

“Here.”

Her attention snapped back to the woman with the ponytail, who held out what looked like a glass orb, probably the size of a small cantaloupe. 

“That the zanpakutō reacted that way means you have enough reiryoku to attend the academy. But it’s not a very good measure of just how much. That’s what this is for. Just hold it with both hands.”

Yuzu took it carefully, half-expecting an explosion or some other uncomfortable sensation, holding it near the bottom but away from her body, her hands slightly apart and fingers fanned wide. 

The main examiner huffed, and shook her head. “It’s not going to kill you, Kurosaki-kun.”

And indeed it did not. Rather, the orb slowly turned colors, like someone had dropped a splash of dye into it, only the dye was coming from Yuzu’s fingertips. It was magenta-pink, and swirled around inside the orb as if it were a curl of smoke from her father’s pipe, thickening and darkening at the same time. 

“Huh. Looks like we’ve got an eight.” 

The woman sounded a bit impressed, maybe, though Yuzu had no idea why. She wasn’t actually doing anything, as far as she could tell. But the rasp of brushes on paper informed her that this was going into her notes as well. 

“All right, Kurosaki-kun,” the woman said, grasping the top of the orb and removing it from her hands. “Move-in day is next week. Class listings will be posted by noon, so you’ll want to check those. You’ll get your zanpakutō back when you show up for zanjutsu class on your first day, which is the day after you move in, so…” She frowned and turned to the male examiner. 

“October second,” he said, and the woman nodded. 

“Right. Until then, we’ll hold onto it for you. You’re dismissed.”

It took a full five heartbeats for Yuzu to actually process that. She… she’d been accepted? Her eyes rounded, and her lips parted before she realized she had no idea what to say. 

“Um…” It occurred to her she’d also been dismissed already, and her face flushed when the examiner raised an eyebrow at her. “Thank you!” she added hastily, bowing deeply and turning around to flee the room as fast as could still be considered polite. 

Out in the hallway, she planted her back against the wall and took several calming breaths. She’d passed. 

She’d actually _passed_. 

It was, she observed, a very bad time to be having second thoughts.

* * *

Dinner at the Kurosaki house was a green curry he hadn’t tried before. When the spice hit the back of his tongue, Uryū had to admit, if only to himself, that even he could take a few culinary lessons from Yuzu. 

“So…? Don’t leave us hanging here.” Yoruichi looked between the three of them, her eyes landing on him last of all. 

Uryū swallowed. “What else do you want to know? We all passed, and we have no idea what classes we’re in for another week.” He picked up a knuckle-sized ball of rice and coated it lightly in the curry.

“Well, there’s more to it than that, right?” Isshin, pausing in the middle of shoveling another bite into his mouth, set his bowl down and grabbed his cup of tea. “They gave you an asauchi, right? And then did the thing with the glass ball?”

Across the table, Karin nodded, swallowing audibly. She flinched as her bite went down, a sure sign she’d been a bit hasty in doing so. “Mine stayed a katana, but the hilt turned this really bright red, and the metal parts look coppery or something, I dunno.” She shrugged, but didn’t seem to quite be able to manage her normal blasé expression. Uryū thought she might be on the verge of a smile, even. 

Yuzu was a bit more subdued. “What was that orb thing, anyway?” she asked, nibbling at some snap peas. 

“It’s called a _Kikeisoku_ ,” Yoruichi replied. “It’s a device that measures the concentration of reiryoku in whoever is touching it. Kisuke invented it… probably a hundred and twenty years ago now? The placement part of the exams used to be a lot more indirect, because of the difference between how much reiryoku a person has and how much of it can be felt as reiatsu.” 

“Isn’t that a crude way of trying to decide who belongs in an accelerated class?” Uryū asked, shifting slightly in his seat. “People can expand their pools of reiryoku, can’t they?”

“Yes, but it’s not easy. And generally speaking, people who start out with the most end up with the most as well. It’s not the only measure of someone’s potential, but it’s the best single indicator. After that, hard work has to take care of the rest.”

He was tempted to say something about confirmation bias—of course they’d end up better off in the end if they had the best instruction. He only shook his head instead. 

“They said something about ‘eight’ when I did that part,” Karin said. “Is that like… eight out of ten or what?”

“Out of twenty-five,” Isshin said. “But in the reverse order. One’s the highest, not the lowest.” He grinned widely. “Most fukutaichō-class shinigami are around six or so.”

“The scale’s bottom-heavy,” said Yoruichi. “You have to rate a fifteen to make Shin’ō, and only five percent of applicants can do that much.” 

Uryū pursed his lips. “Presumably, the instance in the general population is even smaller.” 

Isshin nodded. “It is. The vast majority of souls within Soul Society don’t have much reiryoku at all. Some historian at the academy did a survey once, and taught it to my medicine class. I think it was… something like eighty percent of people are right at twenty five? Anyway, it makes healing them harder, because you can’t use their reiryoku to accelerate it if they don’t have any.” 

“Someone will probably teach all of this to you at some point,” Yoruichi said. “In addition to your four practicum classes, you have the mandatory history lectures and optional classes on a bunch of other things. I think each division, plus the Onmitsukidō and Kidō Corps, publishes a list of what they recommend if you want to be best-qualified for a position with them.” 

“Yeah,” Isshin agreed, “except half of them pretty much tell you to do whatever. Unless you’re looking outside the Gotei 13 or at the Fourth or Second, no one really cares what you do.”

Yoruichi snorted into her tea. “Which was fortunate for you, since you skipped everything but your health lectures and practica, if I remember the story.” 

“Yeah, because everything else was _boring_.” Isshin paused for a moment, blinked, and sputtered a little. “But, uh… you girls should go to all your classes and do your best. You too, Ishida!” He clapped a large hand on Uryū’s shoulder, forcing him forward slightly under the sheer weight of it. 

Karin rolled her eyes, and Yuzu gave him a sympathetic look. 

“If you say so,” Uryū said, going for diplomacy.

* * *

Yoruichi found him on the porch later that evening.

The Kurosakis had a small garden along the side of their house, the opposite direction from the attached clinic, and for lack of anything else to do, he sat on the wooden floor and stared blankly out at the flowers. 

“What’s eating you?” She was a cat again, and flopped herself down next to him. 

He hesitated. “I understand why I’m doing this.” 

“There’s a ‘but’ there.”

Uryū sighed. For several moments, he let the silence permeate and gathered his thoughts. “I understand it, and I’m willing to go along with this because the two of you think it’s going to make a difference, but…” 

His memories of that day were hazy—he’d just been a child, after all. But he knew what had happened. He knew why his grandfather had died. 

“Somewhere in there is the person or people responsible for what happened. What if I end up… what if I encounter them? What if I _don’t_? Is it… am I betraying his memory to even go at all?” Uryū pressed a fist to his sternum, rubbing hard at the spot through the fabric of his shirt. 

“I didn’t know Sōken very well at all,” Yoruichi said, the very end of her tail curling up and down slowly. “So I can’t answer that for you. But I think you should ask yourself what kind of person he was, and what kind of person he wanted you to be, and let that be your answer.”

Uryū felt a fraction of the tension bleed out of his shoulders. “I thought you might say that.”

“Did it help?”

“…It’s enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Kikeisoku_ –気計測 – “Spirit Measure.” A device invented by Urahara to detect the level of reiryoku in a soul. More accurate than usual spirit perception, which senses reiatsu, which can be suppressed and exuded at different percentage rates between people. The amount and thickness of the color in the orb corresponds to a scale of reiryoku classes, from 1-25. Denser, more saturated smoke indicates more reiryoku, but the color just corresponds to the actual color of that person’s energy. I made this up, but it’s at least consistent with canon, where supposedly Kaien Shiba’s reiryoku was “sixth class” when he went into the academy, which was the level you’d expect of a lieutenant. Yuzu and Karin are both eighth-class, which would easily match the reiryoku levels of the average single-digit-seat officer, but as Uryū rightly points out, other factors play in to how effective someone is as a shinigami.
> 
> * * *
> 
> This chapter was a lot of setup, and a lot of me spilling headcanon everywhere, since there’s really no information on exactly what the entrance exams for Shin’ō consist of. Also extrapolating on exactly how zanpakutō change sealed forms (like whether they’re wakizashi or katana or whatever), since we see a lot of variation even in those between shinigami. In case it wasn’t obvious, the canon divergence gets serious here.
> 
> Also, I know that canon Yuzu’s name is not really Yuzuki. I changed it because "Yuzu" always just kind of sounded like a nickname to me. I expect it will almost never matter.
> 
> It occurred to me halfway through plotting this that it is, if you squint, a high school fic. I’m going to try _really_ hard not to make it feel like one, but the whole ‘work through your issues with your zanpakutō' thing is just begging for some character study, and I can’t resist.


	2. October

“First class! I’m so proud!” 

Karin slid a foot or so to the left, avoiding her father’s attempt at a hug-tackle by a narrow margin, judging from the air that blew past her face. Yuzu, however, was swept up in it, making small squeaking noises by way of protest, though they were muffled against the old man’s kosode. 

When she was sure he couldn't see, Karin allowed herself a small smile at the sight of her name alongside her sister’s in the roster for the accelerated class. Ishida was there, too, which somehow didn’t surprise her, and she let the smile drop before she turned to him. 

“Guess we’re classmates.”

He adjusted his glasses, which hadn’t looked to her like they were in much need of it, and made a vague noise of agreement. “So it would seem.” His eyes moved so that he was looking over her shoulder, and the corner of his mouth slanted down. 

“He’s still hugging her and babbling, isn’t he?”

“Should we be concerned about suffocation?” 

Karin rolled her eyes. “No. The geezer acts like an idiot, but he’s not actually that careless.” 

“Should we get our stuff into our rooms? I think we’re together, Karin.” Yuzu, newly freed, attempted to pat down her ruffled hair, but it was pretty much a lost cause unless she pulled out the ties first. 

“Sure. Got anything you want us to help you move, Ishida?” Karin glanced down at the small satchel at his feet. It was all he’d arrived with, and probably all he’d brought. Then again, she didn’t have a whole lot more. It wasn't like they’d need a ton of clothes or anything. 

“No, thank you. I suppose I’ll see you both at the first lecture tomorrow?”

Yuzu nodded. “Mhm. We’ll save you a spot if we get there first.”

* * *

Uryū arrived at the room he’d been assigned to find it empty. He considered himself fortunate—the last thing he really wanted to deal with was someone else’s family all moving around in what was a fairly tight space. 

It wasn’t terrible; there were only two beds, and they were on opposite sides of the room, both with a pile of linens folded neatly on top. There was also a desk on each half, closer to the front, and a pair of sliding doors that presumably went to modest closets. The floor was standard green tatami, and the desks made out of a light, yellowish wood. 

Making a note to go see about uniforms in a bit, Uryū deposited his satchel on the desk, opening it and tucking his existing garments away at the top of the closet. Other than that, he had a small selection of sewing supplies, writing utensils and notebooks, and toiletries. Yoruichi had assured him that the practice was for the academy to provide all absolutely essential supplies, which he supposed made sense considering that many of the students came from the Rukongai, and might not own much. 

He’d seen a flyer for remedial reading classes posted with the class assignments. He wasn’t sure how that was supposed to be helpful, but maybe they verbally asked about it at some point in the first couple of days.

He was stowing his sewing kit in the drawer of the desk when someone else entered the room. A man with short brown hair and a stocky build, dressed in what Uryū judged to be a well-made yukata, looked him over for exactly three seconds before turning and walking back out the door, closing it with a snap behind him. 

In all likelihood, he’d have to get used to that.

* * *

Three hours later, another man showed up, this one slightly older-looking, though that didn’t mean anything here. The newcomer was blond and about an inch shorter than Uryū, but he smiled amiably enough, meandering his way to the right half of the room and dropping his stuff on the unmade bed. 

“I’m Matsuda,” he said, his accent slightly thickened, and rougher than most. 

“Ishida.” 

Matsuda nodded, threw most of his sheets under the bed, spread the blanket, and went to sleep, snoring softly. 

That, Uryū could deal with.

* * *

Yuzu must have checked her schedule half a dozen times just to make sure she was in the right place. The enormous lecture hall was empty save for herself and Karin, who observed their surroundings through bleary eyes. 

“Remind me again why we had to be so early?”

Yuzu shifted; her shitagi and kosode were slightly loose, but they hadn’t had any smaller ones, and so she made do by tying everything more tightly. “…because I promised Ishida-san we’d save him a spot?”

Karin rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Wake me up when the teacher gets here, would you?” She folded both arms on the long writing table in front of her, and slumped forward, pressing her forehead into the middle of them. 

Yuzu smiled slightly, reaching down for the bag of supplies she’d carried in over her shoulder. Taking out a pair of notebooks and two pens, she set Karin’s in front of her and cracked the second notebook, writing _History of Soul Society_ on the center of the first page. They hadn’t used to sell pens in Soul Society, at least not anywhere Yuzu could find, but within the last couple of years, a small stationary shop had opened in the First District that carried ones from the living world, both the disposable kind like theirs and the fancy fountain kinds, with the bottles of ink. 

She supposed they must have come into fashion within the Seireitei, or something like that. Yuzu had never really understood the strange cultural mixture around here. Within the Seireitei, she’d heard that they had really advanced computers and touch-screen technology for some things, but most of the paperwork was still done with ink and brush. Out in the Rukongai, technology was much more difficult to find, even in really simple, cheap forms like these. It was frankly a little baffling for her, but maybe this class would help her answer such questions eventually. 

She didn’t notice the way her knee was bouncing up and down until Karin abruptly reached under the table and put her hand over it, stilling the motion. 

“Yuzu,” she said, voice muffled from where she was still leaning against her other arm. “Calm down. I can hear you thinking too hard. It’s distracting.”

“Sorry, Karin,” she said, sighing softly. 

A few more students filtered in over the next couple of minutes, most of them electing to sit either far in the front or far in the back, and pretty much all of them alone. The clock on the wall showed fifteen minutes left until class was supposed to start when Ishida entered. 

Yuzu looked over her shoulder as the door opened again, and when she spotted him, she raised an arm and waved it back and forth several times. 

He hesitated momentarily, but approached anyway. 

“Good morning, Ishida-san,” Yuzu greeted, prodding Karin gently under the table.

Her sister lifted her head long enough to give a laconic salute, then went back to dozing, shifting a little in her chair in an attempt to get comfortable. 

“Good morning to you as well, Yuzu-san.” He sat on her other side, taking out his own supplies. 

Yuzu tilted her head when she saw his hands. “You wore the gloves from your other gear,” she said, noting the blue stripe on the middle two fingers. 

“The uniform regulations indicate only that all parts are to be worn, and none may be obscured by other articles,” he replied, splaying his hand out on the surface of the table. “As there is nothing standardly on the hands, I am obeying both precepts.”

“Technically,” she said, giving him a mild smile. “I think it’s good, though.” 

She noticed the tilt of his brow, and rushed to explain.

“That you’re proud of it, I mean. Being a Quincy. It’s easy to start… forgetting about things from the living world, if you stay here long enough.”

Yuzu wondered if she hadn't said too much when he frowned slightly.

“Sorry,” she amended. “I didn’t mean to project or unload on you or anything.” She grimaced, but he shook his head. 

“No, it’s fine. I don’t—”

He cut himself off as a door at the front of the room opened, and a very tall, somewhat rotund man walked in. He was bald, and very tan, with thick eyebrows and round glasses. The students in the room immediately fell silent, and Yuzu turned to poke Karin, only to discover that her twin was already upright and attentive. 

The man scanned the room, almost as if he were counting them, and Yuzu did the same, trying to be unobtrusive but unable to avoid craning her neck a little to see those behind. This was a big lecture hall, but there were probably only ten or so people in it, including the three of them. 

“Welcome to Shin’ō Academy.” The man’s voice was rolling and sonorous, filling the whole hall without trouble. He didn’t even have to yell to do it, and his tone was evenly modulated and neutral. “I am Gengorō Ōnabara, head teacher for class one, and the ten of you are this year’s top-scoring entrants. I recommend you all get a good look at each other, because you’ll be spending a great deal of time in one another’s company.”

He paused, apparently to allow them to do just that, and there was a fair bit of uncomfortable shuffling, as everyone glanced around. Yuzu exchanged a look with her sister, and another with Ishida, seeking the familiar before daring to make eye contact with a stranger. 

The other seven students varied in just about every way imaginable. She and Karin were two of only three in red, but then, the exam lines had been mostly filled with men as well, for whatever reason. The other girl was tall, Yuzu could tell, and sat with upright posture, her long black hair braided over one shoulder. 

The oldest man looked about her father’s age, actually, and had a jagged scar along the left side of his jaw. The youngest might have been in his early twenties, if they were in the living world, and looked like he hadn’t ever seen much sun. Aside from him and the woman, though, she suspected most of them were from the middle districts. But since everyone wore the same uniform now, it was difficult to tell anything about their histories just by looking at them. 

That was probably a good thing. 

“Your fellow students will be your teammates and your challengers, your friends and your rivals, and you would do well to remember that. The ten of you compose an elite group—those among the applicants whose potential far exceeds the rest.” Ōnabara folded his arms into his sleeves, which sort of made him look like a daruma doll, but the atmosphere was far too heavy for that to make Yuzu smile.

“Because of your demonstrated talent, you will receive advanced instruction from the very start. You will be expected to outperform everyone else at each juncture, and your instructors will be harder on you than they would on other students. But you will also have additional privileges, including the ability to access practice buildings and the library at night, and a later curfew on weekends. We trust that you will honor these testaments to our confidence in you, and not abuse them.” 

There was a deliberate silence for several seconds after that, and Yuzu automatically filled it with an ‘or else’ clause. Maybe that was the point. 

Ōnabara’s tone shifted, and he removed one hand from his bell-sleeve to adjust his glasses by the earpiece. “That is where the speech usually ends,” he said, fixing each one of them in turn with his eyes. “But as most of you are no doubt aware, there may soon come a time when what is standard is not enough. And so I will tell you that there is one more thing we are changing for you, and for us.” He pursed his lips, the lines around his eyes deepening. 

“This year’s zanjutsu classes will run half an hour longer than they customarily do, and that half-hour will be devoted entirely to _Jinzen_ , communion with your zanpakutō. Normally, we do not ask students to devote so much time to this until at least the third year, but it has been decided that this part of the curriculum must be compressed.” A furrow appeared between his brows—it sounded like he almost had to grind the words out. 

“It is the hope of the Gotei 13, and the Central 46, that at least some of you will be able to attain shikai before you are due to graduate. Any student who manages to accomplish this feat may apply to take their exit exams at the end of the academy year in which they achieve it. If all those exams are passed, the student will graduate, and receive a posting just as if they had completed all six years of the program.” 

Yuzu gaped. There were, of course, stories of geniuses who had completed the academy curriculum in a year or two; they came along now and then, and that was expected. But this… it sounded like a much more concentrated effort to accelerate students out of the academy. Not that she thought it likely that too many of them would achieve _shikai_ ; her dad said many shinigami _never_ did. 

“Are there any questions?”

Yuzu felt a shift beside her as Karin raised a hand. “What’s the fastest anyone’s ever gotten shikai?” 

“Tōshiro Hitsugaya-taichō obtained his shikai eight months after he enrolled at Shin’ō. A few others have managed it in the first year. There is a possibility, however small, that one of you could do the same.”

“Eight months,” Karin muttered under her breath, nodding to herself.

Yuzu’s eyes rounded. It sounded like…

But another hand went up, and she didn’t get the chance to ask.

* * *

The first class after the history lecture was, for class one, the zanjutsu practicum. 

“Do you think we’ll actually have to use our zanpakutō to spar with each other?” Yuzu asked from beside him, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. 

“That’s how the officers do it, right?” Karin shrugged one shoulder, leaning casually back against the wall. Her eyes kept flickering towards the door. Then again, so did most everyone’s.

Uryū brushed nonexistent dirt off the front of his uniform. “I think it’s highly unlikely, Yuzu-san. I expect that the fundamentals will be taught with wooden arms.” It would surely be far too dangerous to risk anything else until they were adequately prepared. 

She nodded, her posture slackening slightly, only to abruptly straighten her spine again as the door to the practice room slid open. 

At first, two muscular men entered, carrying between them what looked like a large crate with an open top. A few sword handles protruded from it, so it wasn’t difficult to guess what they were carrying. Carefully, both gripped the poles on their shoulders, stepping out from underneath their burden and lowering it to touch the ground. 

“Thanks guys; you can head back now.” 

The voice was familiar, and Uryū recognized it an instant before its bearer stepped through the door, scratching absently at the back of his tattooed neck and turning to glance over the assembled students. 

“All right. You all are the first class, right? I’m Renji Abarai, and I’ll be teaching your zanjutsu practic— _Ishida_?” His perusal finally reached the end where Uryū and the Kurosakis sat, and he froze in the middle of what he was saying. 

“Abarai-sensei,” Uryū said, drawing the syllables out in an intentional deadpan. 

“Uh.” Renji blinked slowly at him for several more seconds. “O-kay then. Right.” He shook his head rather vigorously, as if resetting his thoughts, picking up where he’d left off. “Anyway, I’m teaching this class’s zanjutsu practicum. And leading your _Jinzen_ , at least until you can do it yourselves. The first thing today is getting your zanpakutō back. From now on, you have to keep them with you everywhere you go. That’s every class, every time you go out to the Rukongai, even if you’re sitting around in the library. If you’re wearing your uniform, you’re wearing your zanpakutō, got it?” 

Most of the class bobbed their heads up and down. 

“Uh, okay, good then. Let’s see… who’s first…?” He reached down into the crate and picked up a nodachi with a dark blue hilt wrapping. “Abe? Who’s Abe?”

“Here, sensei.” A rough-looking man with a scar on his face stood, bowed in front of Renji, and accepted his sword, sliding it into his sash. 

Uryū tagged faces with names as they went by. The man who’d almost been his roommate was Moribito, the sickly-looking one was Nishimura. Tojo was a large, broad person with a large, broad grin. Sugitani had almost as many tattoos as Renji, but they were in color and seemed to center around themes of water and fish, if the ones on his neck and forearms were anything to go by. Fujita was the third woman in the group, and with his _actual_ cohabitant Matsuda added, the class had precisely ten.

“Ishida.” 

Uryū stood, advancing to stand in front of Renji. He tried not to grimace when the time came to bow, and from the look on Renji’s face, he wasn’t enjoying it either, but he handed over the zanpakutō. 

“It’s a nice blade,” he said, not exactly quietly, but probably not loud enough for anyone else to hear, either, occupied as they were with their own swords. 

“Thanks.” Uryū stepped back, returning to his seat with his zanpakutō in-hand. 

He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when he touched the asauchi that had been placed in front of him. Once, he’d inadvertently touched Sode no Shirayuki, and there had been a definite… _something_. A presence that he could feel. But with his own, there was no such thing. Perhaps that was because it was still _just_ an asauchi, something that had not been released yet. Physically, it was a wakizashi, the hilt black throughout and the metal all dark grey. The tsuba had the form of five strands of steel, originating at equidistant points and all curled around in a smooth clockwise pattern, giving the impression of a turning motion. 

But it felt like an ordinary piece of metal. 

Sliding it into his sash, Uryū lowered himself back into his seat. For the moment, he simply had to submit himself to the process, and work diligently at it in hopes of worthwhile result. He had the distinct, untraceable feeling that he _needed_ to achieve shikai by the end of the year, and despite his knowledge that the difference between one and two years would likely be negligible, he could not shake that intuition.

* * *

“All right, kids. This is where things actually get difficult.”

Karin frowned. For the last week, kidō class had just been a lot of memorizing and trying out stances and the like, which was incredibly boring. Matsuda had fallen asleep in yesterday’s lecture, only for Kozu-sensei to wake him up with a live demonstration of _Hadō #4_. 

She wondered if that was even allowed, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one to ask. Kozu-sensei, who had apparently been one of Yuzu’s examiners, looked slightly more like a street fighter than a shinigami, but apparently she was third seat in the Kidō Corps, or whatever they had instead of seats. 

“This isn’t zanjustu, where you can play around with bokken for a while before you move on to the dangerous stuff. If you fuck these spells up, you could seriously hurt yourselves or each other. So pay attention to what you’re doing.” Kozu gripped her biceps with the opposite hands, face falling into a scowl. 

“Who remembers the stance and incantation for _Hadō #1_?”

Several hands went up, including Yuzu’s and Ishida’s. Karin added hers to the set, letting it hover near her head and list slightly to the side, avoiding eye contact with Kozu. 

“Fujita, let’s see it.” 

The fancy-looking girl stood, advancing to the front of the range. Several targets were set up at the other end, thus far unused. Fujita stood on the white line marking their spot, and extended both arms, bracing her right hand with her left wrist and folding down all her fingers but the first. 

“ _Hadō #1: Shō_.” 

There was something in the air, like a weird pulse or ripple, and it flew straight for the target, smashing into the left side of it, blowing half the rectangle off the post it capped. It hung awkwardly in parts, still attached by a few splinters, but then broke off and fell onto the grass with a rustle. 

Karin blinked. No words. It was only the first Hadō, but still. 

“Pretty sure I asked who knew the stance _and incantation_ , Fujita. Next time you wanna show off, you can clean the range by yourself afterwards, got it?”

“Yes, sensei.” 

Karin was pretty sure there wasn’t even a tiny bit of apology in the way Fujita said it, and she blinked when the other girl moved past to take her spot in the second row. Yeah, that little smile was totally smug. She glanced sideways at Ishida and rolled her eyes.

His eyebrow quirked a little. Karin was pretty sure that was Ishida-ese for agreement.

“For those of you who _don’t_ have family members in the Corps, let’s go over that incantation again.” Kozu wrinkled her nose, tossing her ponytail back with a sharp head motion. “You’ve gotta memorize these, because they don’t actually make any sense or correlate even a little bit to what you’re doing. So learn ‘em upside down and backwards.”

Karin suppressed a groan. Who knew becoming a shinigami would be so much like actual _school_?

* * *

Yuzu pulled in another breath, wincing when it aggravated the stitch in her side. Putting her palm against her ribcage, she forced her legs to keep pumping, already wishing it was over. She hadn’t had a P.E. class since elementary school in the living world, and somehow it was worse than she remembered. 

“You should pick up your feet more, Kurosaki-kun.”

“Gah!” Yuzu jumped sideways at the sudden appearance of her teacher, and her left foot scuffed hard against the packed-earth track they were running on. She nearly went down, but then a gnarled hand reached out and pulled her back by the shoulder. 

Beside her, Yanagi-sensei, a diminutive old man with a bushy white mustache and a perpetually-unruffled air about him, smiled mildly. “Whoops-a-daisy. Take care, now.” He kept pace with her absolutely effortlessly, as though he were out for a nice, ambling stroll on a weekend afternoon. 

Yuzu felt her face starting to flush. She was easily the most out of shape in her entire class, and that included Nishimura-san, who she’d thought was kind of sickly, and Tojo-san, who had to be at least triple her size. 

Karin lapped her on the left— _again_ —and Yuzu tried not to start crying in front of her instructor. It was difficult, though—the wind was in her eyes and her side hurt and now her toe was throbbing too. She pressed her hand harder into her ribs and puffed several times, trying to pick her shuffle up into something moderately respectable. 

“I know it’s hard now,” Yanagi said quietly. “But you’ll get the hang of it.” He dipped his chin and sped up, easily eating the ground between himself and the next runner ahead. 

Yuzu’s lungs burned and her eyes burned and everything felt heavy and awful and humiliating, but she kept shuffling forward.

* * *

The heel of Moribito’s hand cracked up into Karin’s jaw, and she lost her footing, falling to her ass on the ground and forgetting to tuck in the way she was supposed to. The impact jolted up her tailbone all along her spine, and she bit back a curse. 

The jerk stood over her, arms crossed, a sly slant to the corner of his mouth. 

There was a thud from the mat next to her. Fujita had just dropped Yuzu, who rolled out of it and stood back up, resetting her stance. 

Karin couldn’t well do any less. Gritting her teeth, she pushed herself up off the mat, cracking her neck to either side and flexing her fingers. Sinking her center of gravity until her knees were bent almost at a square angle, she waited. 

Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait long. Moribito came in low, trying to unsettle her stance, and Karin sidestepped, driving for his side with her fists. 

He caught her on the backswing, slamming an elbow into her stomach.

“Ngh!” Karin folded like a fan, the impact strong enough to push all the air from her lungs. She lost track of trying to do anything but breathe, and when she got awareness of her surroundings back, her hakuda teacher was looking down at her. 

Lin Fēng was a tiny person, about Yuzu’s size, with streaks of grey in her hair and a very judgmental stare. Or, well, it sure looked judgmental right now, anyway. 

“Get up,” she said, and Karin groaned, losing almost all the air she’d regained to do it. 

“Now. And stop acting like you’re the same size as him. You aren’t, and you never will be.”

So Karin got up, dusting herself off and scowling at Moribito. He was still smirking.

Asshole.

* * *

It was a very ordinary door.

In fact, it was exactly like the one that led into his room, except the names on the temporary paper tags were Kurosaki and Kurosaki, not Ishida and Matsuda. 

Uryū hovered just outside of it, entirely uncertain that he wanted to do this. But his options were limited, and Yuzu had made the offer. Still, it was imposing, and he rather thought he’d worn out their hospitality plenty already. 

But where else would he go? His desk in the library was still covered in glue and profanity, and Matsuda and his friends were still playing King’s Cup in his room, making it a suboptimal place to engage in anything productive. 

Forcing a breath out through his nose, he raised his hand and knocked twice, stepping back to a polite distance. 

It was Karin that pulled the door open. “Hey Ishida.” She stepped back inside, leaving it ajar for him to follow. 

Removing his shoes and placing them just inside the threshold, he did, making sure to shut the door behind him. The room itself was somehow exactly what he’d expected: Yuzu’s half was composed, minimalist and elegant, with everything in its place. A cheerful green bamboo plant sat in a delicately-painted ceramic pot on the corner of the desk, and a line of stuffed animals occupied the foot of the bed. 

Karin’s side was more… lived in. The bed wasn’t made, the covers pushed down to the end, and the desk had a smattering of loose paper spread across it, a spare shitagi draped over the back of the accompanying chair. 

Uryū tried to quash the distinct feeling of awkwardness. Some part of him remembered that he was in a girl’s dormitory and the door was shut and it was _not quite in line with propriety_. 

The other part was curiously reassured by the fact that they didn’t seem to notice. Karin plopped back down on her bed, reaching over to pull the shitagi off her desk chair. 

“You can move my crap if you need to. Just put it in a pile or something.” She moved her attention back to the paper she was writing on, braced on a textbook, propped on her knees. 

“Hello, Ishida-san,” Yuzu said, glancing up from her desk and sparing him a smile. “What do you have to work on?”

He sank into Karin’s chair, carefully stacking her papers and setting them aside before he could start organizing by subject matter and date. “I was going to start that essay for Kidō Theory.”

“We have an essay in Kidō Theory? Shit. When’s it due?” Karin stretched her legs out, curling and uncurling her toes.

Uryū checked his notes. “Three weeks from now.”

“Seriously? You’re as bad as Yuzu.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing.”

He let it go, flipping through his notebook to the pages he wanted, underlining what he thought would be most relevant to the assignment. Occasionally, he’d hear the scratching of Yuzu’s pen or a frustrated sound of some kind from Karin, but for the most part, it was quiet. At least for a while. 

“Hey, what’s the time limit on shinigami in the living world again?”

“A month,” Uryū said automatically.

“Thanks. Stupid history assignment. Why do we have to learn this, anyway? It’s not like it’s going to matter. Nobody remembers anything before the Seireitei anyhow.”

“I bet the Sōtaichō does,” Yuzu said. “Wasn’t he one of the first people to establish the Gotei 13? I think he and one of the other current captains were both in the first generation of them.”

“Well it’s not in our book, so if the old man ever bites it, I guess we’re screwed for that information.” 

Uryū shook his head. “There’s a lot of information sealed under the Central 46 chambers. I’m guessing it’s somewhere in there.”

Karin scowled. “Well then why isn’t it in the book? It just doesn’t make any sense to start 2,000 years ago and say nothing about how all this crap got here in the first place.”

“Maybe they don’t want you to know.” Uryū made the last stroke on his kanji and glanced up at her. “Why does Soul Society resemble ancient Japan? Which way does the influence go? If it’s from Soul Society out, why did it only affect one culture so much? Shinigami operate over the entire living world. If it went the other way, why choose that culture? In either case, why has it stayed the same for so long, when the living world changes so quickly by comparison?”

Yuzu turned to face them, draping an elbow over the back of her chair. “Maybe because most people forget their deaths and things? So they just kind of… assimilate to what’s already here?”

Uryū dipped his head. “Certainly. But the power the Seireitei and the Central 46 have over how things are done could easily be used to change the culture, if they desired to. So why not do it? Plenty of technology is available to them, I’ve heard. Some more advanced even than what’s in the living world. But people in the Rukongai are still living under a feudal government, a system most living world cultures did away with centuries ago, and some never had at all.” 

“You know, that is kind of fucked up, isn’t it? Like… you couldn’t even get a cheap pen out there until like two years ago. How’s anyone supposed to learn to write if they can’t afford the paper and stuff?” Karin frowned, spinning hers between her thumb and forefinger. “Half of the old man’s patients can’t even sign their names.”

“But why would anyone want things to continue being that way?” Yuzu’s brows knit, forming a little vertical line between them. 

“Who benefits if people can’t read?” Uryū asked. 

Yuzu tilted her head, but Karin clicked her tongue against her teeth. “The people who can.”

“And they are?”

“…nobles, shinigami, and people who live in the inner districts.” Yuzu looked like she’d bitten into something very sour. 

“Exactly.”

They all fell silent after that, returning to their work with heavier thoughts than before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Kosode_ – 小袖 – “Small sleeve.” The outer layer of the shinigami uniform, and also the academy one. 
> 
> _Asauchi_ – 浅打 – “Shallow Hit.” A generic zanpakutō, not yet attuned enough to its wielder to be released. Not to be confused with a sealed zanpakutō, which could be released but is not. At this point, Karin, Yuzu, and Uryū all have asauchi, even though their swords have changed shape from the way they were originally forged and are superficially unique.
> 
>  _Jinzen_ – 刃禅 – “Sword Meditation.” The practice of entering one’s inner world and communicating with a zanpakutō spirit. This is the only way to learn a zanpakutō’s name, and one of only two methods that can be used to attain Bankai.
> 
>  _Shitagi_ –下着 – “Under clothing.” The lower layer of either the shinigami shikahushō or the academy uniform. Karin and Yuzu’s are red, Uryū’s is blue.
> 
>  _Hadō #1: Shō_ – 破道#1:衝 – “Way of Destruction #1: Thrust.” A kidō technique that generates a small burst of kinetic energy at the index finger.
> 
> * * *
> 
> So here’s the first look into what I imagine Shin’ō runs like. There’s a little extra weirdness since everyone’s worried about Aizen, so Soul Society’s really trying to push class one through as fast as possible in hopes of striking upon a student or two who can get shikai fast. It makes sense, if you consider that zanpakutō abilities are unique and unpredictable. For all anyone knows, some student at the Academy will manifest exactly the thing they need to deal with Aizen, and even one more person they can hustle to near-fukutaichō level could make a difference. (Toshirō once pointed out that if Aizen could get ten Espada-level Arrancar, that would be enough to pose a serious threat to Soul Society; likewise if Soul Society can get a few more ranked officers, they might have better odds.)
> 
> I promise this is not secretly a story about OCs. I did need to populate class one, however, and they also needed teachers. The environment is competitive and intense, and hopefully that’s coming through okay. Also, Lin Fēng is indeed a relative of Suì-Fēng. Renji is teaching zanjutsu to class one as part of his punishment for beating up his own division members and breaking out of prison, which happened offscreen in the last fic between his fight with Uryū and him helping Rukia try to escape, similarly to where it happens in canon. 
> 
> I also think he’d be a good teacher for it: he’s skilled enough, officers in canon sometimes teach, and he already writes a column for the Seireitei Bulletin about getting shikai. Also I found the idea amusingly awkward, considering.
> 
> Next chapter: Karin, Yuzu and Ishida make some progress in skills, Ishida can’t find his zanpakutō spirit anywhere, and Rukia puts in an appearance.


	3. November

_Jinzen_ was a particular challenge for Uryū.

This wasn’t because he had any difficulty accessing his inner world—he’d been able to do that for years. Obviously he’d been the first in the group to manage it, something Renji had apparently demonstrated by snapping his fingers in front of Uryū’s face several times for the benefit of the rest of the class. 

Or so Karin had told him, anyway. 

The problem was rather that now, nearly three months into this whole endeavor, everyone else was at least in occasional contact with the spirit of their zanpakutō, and Uryū had yet to even _find_ his. 

Today would apparently be no different. He entered his inner world, blinked to adjust to the light, and found Lucia in the exact same place she’d been since the _first_ time he’d ventured into Soul Society. He assumed that a zanpakutō spirit would manifest much as she did—a roughly human shape with some obviously symbolic characteristics, like the prominent Quincy cross on Lucia’s full-body cloak. 

She was the only thing in his inner world at all, as far as he could tell, and she never moved, so Uryū used her as a point of reference, striking out in a different direction from her each day, searching the endless white until his eyes couldn’t stand the strain, extending his spiritual sense as well, just in case, and coming up with absolutely nothing. Not even a blip of reiatsu or the faint outline of a person.

To make matters worse, he still couldn’t perceive depth at all, and so sometimes he turned around and swore that Lucia had only grown smaller, not more distant. He had no way of knowing how far he’d searched, how far he _could_ go, or even if he went anywhere at all. The completely flat brightness of the inner world gave him no reference, and he occasionally became certain that he must be walking vertically rather than horizontally, only the feel of it didn’t change at all. It was disconcerting at best.

Uryū found himself abruptly jolted from the _Jinzen_ when something hit his body with enough force to register, a burst of pain in his head. Lifting his fingers to his temple, he touched it carefully and grimaced. No blood, but he was probably going to bruise. No object to correspond to the blow. Someone had hit him with a Hadō. A small one, and not significant enough to pose any true danger, but a Hadō all the same. Probably a _Shō_.

Surreptitiously, he glanced around. There were a few people in the class who could cast _Shō_ without the incantation, naming it quietly enough to go unheard by others. He obviously hadn’t done it to himself, and he knew Yuzu would never. That left two that he knew of. Abe, the oldest student in the class, wasn’t the type. If he had a problem with a person, everyone would know about it, because he’d be public and overt. That left Fujita.

Uryū’s eyes fell on her, seated in perfect seiza, apparently deeply intent on her meditation. For a moment, he wondered if he must not be mistaken. But even though he hadn’t been aware enough to notice the fluctuation in reiatsu, he _had_ been pulled out of meditation by a heavy impact—the pain in the side of his head was enough proof of that. 

Slowly, Fujita cracked a dark eye open, fixing it directly on him, leaving him with no further doubt. She had done it, and she’d done it intentionally. 

Uryū scowled, making to rise to his feet.

“All right, everyone, that’s enough for today!” Renji called the end of the meditation, letting his reiatsu fluctuate just enough to gain the attention of those who were still pretty far under. He fixed Uryū with a flat look, shaking his head just slightly. 

“Ishida, you got a minute?”

Uryū conceded, diverting his attention from Fujita, now filing out with the others, and fixing it on Renji. “Of course.”

Renji folded his arms across his chest, waiting until everyone else had gone before speaking. “What was that?” He asked the question without any apparent accusation, only a slight angle to his head. 

“It’s not important,” Uryū replied. His problems were his to deal with, whatever issue Fujita took with his existence included. Though there was really only one issue it could be. 

Renji lifted a hand to scratch at his forehead. “Seemed pretty important to me. And that’s a hell of a bruise you’re going to have there in a bit.”

“I’ll deal with it.”

The fukutaichō sighed heavily. “Yeah, okay, whatever. But fighting between students is a big deal here, and you don’t wanna be breaking that rule. Most people would get warned the first time. You might not.”

“Because I’m a Quincy.” Uryū felt his lip curl. 

“Yeah, pretty much. That’s the way it is. Doesn’t mean it’s right, but you’re only going to get so much leeway, and it’s less than everyone else. Got it?”

“Yes.” Uryū half-turned, intending to take his leave. 

“Hey, hold up. That’s not actually the reason I asked you to stay. Follow me for a sec.”

* * *

“I’ll admit, I was pretty surprised when I heard you were here.” Rukia smiled widely, bringing the apple she held to her mouth and biting down with a crisp _snap_.

Uryū settled beside her on the roof, choosing to sit at the apex of the frame rather than laying along the angle, as she did. He glanced at Renji for a moment, assuming he’d been the one to inform her of the situation. 

“Well… Urahara-san can be persuasive. Especially when Yoruichi-san is helping.” 

She swallowed, rotating the apple in her fingers to get at the next red part. “That I can believe. Still, it’s… weird, is all. Seeing you in an academy uniform, with a zanpakutō.” 

“I think so, too,” he conceded readily, lifting both shoulders.

“How are you finding it?” Another crunch.

Uryū had to give that one some real consideration. In some ways, his negative expectations were bearing themselves out in reality. Most of the other students didn’t talk to him, and gave him a wide berth in the hallways. A fair number stared, and most of those were either hostile or afraid, that was easy enough to tell. The hostile ones, like Moribito and Fujita, made his life more difficult, and the frightened ones just made him uncomfortable. 

But it wasn’t all bad, he supposed. The Kurosakis were easy to get along with, though he did wonder if he might not be making things more difficult for them in the long run. It was surely not unnoticed that they associated with him, and already they were starting to catch some flak by proxy. 

“It… will take some adjusting, yet.” If he even _wanted_ to adjust.

“Yeah… I felt the same. For different reasons, but still.” Rukia peeled flesh off the apple with the reflexive efficiency of someone used to making food count. 

“It’s even worse in the first class, sometimes,” Renji put in knowingly. “Everybody in there’s got something to prove. Noble brats, Rukongai mutts, all of ‘em trying to outdo each other at everything. You learn your stuff faster just to keep up, but it can get kinda ugly sometimes.”

“I have a feeling I know who’s who by now,” Uryū said, tone dry. 

Rukia tilted her head, an invitation for him to elaborate. 

“Nishimura’s noble, and so is Fujita. Moribito, too, but less. He tries harder and more obviously than they do. Tojo and Matsuda are the most relaxed, which I’m guessing puts them somewhere in the middle. Abe and Sugitani are from the outer districts.”

“Huh.” Rukia blinked once. “Fujita? You wouldn’t be talking about Fujita Ume, would you?”

“I believe that to be her first name, yes. Why?”

Rukia huffed, clearly amused. “It’s just that the Fujita are one of the vassal clans of the Kuchiki. I’ve met her before; she’s unpleasant.”

“That would be an accurate characterization of my observations as well.”

Rukia rolled her eyes. “Well, as someone who’s used to dealing with people like that, I can tell you that the best thing to do is ignore them. They don’t like it when you do that, and if they can’t get a rise out of you, they usually stop trying after a while.” 

“Eh. Being nobility kind of sounds like it sucks,” Renji said, flopping backwards and sliding down at the same time so he was also reclining with the slope of the roof.

Rukia didn’t seem to have much to say to that. 

“You get some weekends off and stuff, don’t you, Ishida?” she asked instead, glancing at him from the corner of an eye. 

“On occasion.”

“You should come out to Rukongai with us. There’s a small group that gets drinks and just hangs out or whatever. It’s pretty low-key, but Matsumoto was talking about wanting to meet you, and so now Hisagi and Kira do too.” 

That sounded like exactly the type of socialization Uryū had spent most of his life consciously avoiding. He really didn’t want to be stared at by more shinigami or have intrusive questions leveled at him, and he wasn’t especially fond of doing any of it with alcohol involved either. 

He nodded anyway. “I suppose I could.”

“You don’t have to make it sound like a chore,” Rukia said, but she grinned at him. “I’ll have Renji let you know when the next one is.”

* * *

Karin’s footsteps were heavy on the ground, intentionally so. She led Yuzu down the boys’ corridor, counting doors until she came to the one she wanted. Not bothering to knock, she pulled at the handle, marginally less angry when it didn’t turn out to be locked. “Ishida!” 

He started, head whipping to the the side quickly, alarm scrawled over his features for half a second before he smoothed it over again. “Karin-san?”

On the other side of the room, Matsuda rolled over slightly, but did not wake.

“You’re good at hakuda. I need you to make me better at it so I can kick Moribito’s ass.” She said it as bluntly as she said everything else, crossing her arms and leaning her hip against his doorway. 

“Are you sure you want me to—”

“Yes. I’m sure. You’re better than the rest of the class, and that makes you best to practice with. Plus, Yuzu needs to run more laps and I _know_ you’re still pissed that Fujita’s better at kidō than you.” Her mouth dropped into a scowl. “We all need more practice. It’ll work better if we do it together.” 

Karin had always preferred team sports, and that was the reason why. Even if everyone on a team had different skills and was better at different things, the whole group got better if they helped each other out. 

Plus, everyone else in the class was still treating this like an individual game, and that was stupid. 

“All right,” he agreed. “How about tonight, on the track? We can bring a mat for hakuda and some of the portable kidō targets.”

Karin tried not to smile, unsure if she succeeded. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

* * *

Yuzu straightened from her toe-touch, twisting her torso around to the left, and then to the right. She wouldn’t last very long at all on the track if she didn’t stretch first. She probably wouldn’t last that long anyway, come to think of it. But she’d resolved to do the extra practice, and this way she could run while the other two were doing hakuda, and be done in enough time to help with the kidō. 

Better to end the whole thing with something she actually liked, right?

So while Karin practiced trying to throw someone half a foot taller than herself, Yuzu coaxed her body into a jog, remembering to pick her feet up a little more and trying not to lament her apparently permanent snail-pace. 

She’d made it once around the track by the time she realized she wasn’t alone anymore. 

“Sugitani-san?” Of all the people in her classes, Sugitani talked the least, and she had no read on him at all. She certainly hadn’t expected to find him out here on the track near midnight, swinging his arms with exactly the casual ease she envied. 

He didn’t look at her, but he did tilt his head slightly in her direction. An acknowledgement, maybe. Something about him always seemed quite… _intense_ , and it was enough to dissuade Yuzu from attempting much by way of conversation. 

Well, that and the fact that she really needed to save her breath. Still, her father hadn’t raised her to be rude, and so she gave him a smile as he passed her. “Good luck!” 

Fixing her eyes on the track in front of her, Yuzu reverted to the breathing pattern Karin had told her to use: in through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the nose…

What did people _do_ when they ran, anyway? Should she think about something else? What if she tripped? She really didn’t want to fall on her face with Sugitani somewhere around. Humiliating herself in front of her sister and Ishida, who she knew and was fairly comfortable with, would be bad enough. 

Three laps in, Yuzu felt her breath begin to tremble. It was harder and harder to pull them in steadily, and she forgot several times to close her mouth on the inhale. She was getting better at this, maybe, but it was still the most unpleasant thing she had to do in any class, and at least once a week, she seriously questioned her decision to be here. Maybe she wasn’t really cut out for this shinigami business; she knew her temperament could definitely be better-suited. 

Perhaps she should just… go home. Go back to helping her dad at the clinic, and occasionally recall the bullet she’d dodged by not actually waiting to fail out of the academy, or worse, freeze up in a combat situation. This was real life and death, after all, and the only reason she was here to begin with was that Karin hadn’t wanted to take the entrance exam alone. She hadn’t said it, but Yuzu had known, and acted like she wanted to do it too.

She’d expected to fail it.

Yuzu stretched her stride a little, feeling the sweat begin to gather at her back. Really, the only reason she wasn’t so sure quitting was the right thing was because they’d probably take her asauchi back, and she’d had several nice conversations with it. Weren’t they supposed to be part of a person’s soul after a while? Would she feel empty and strange if she gave it up? She couldn’t shake the feeling that she would. 

Her shoulders relaxed slightly, feet plodding along the track in steady rhythm. But of course… then she wondered if maybe that wasn’t the point. Once you reached a certain point in the training, was there any going back at all? Was it a way of guaranteeing that people joined the forces in the Seireitei? 

It sounded like something Ishida would say, but that didn’t make it wrong. 

The stitch in her side was acting up, but Yuzu tried to breathe smoothly through it. Just a few more laps, and then she’d be able to justify taking a break. It was fortunate, she thought, that eventually her spiritual energy would begin to fortify her physical abilities, as soon as they learned how to use it for that. 

Apparently, though, conditioning her actual body was the first step. Yanagi-sensei had made it very clear that the better shape she was in, the more reiatsu-fortification she would be able to handle, and the easier it would be to use. _Shunpō_ was only the beginning, which explained all the laps during his class.

Moving her arm to her side, Yuzu brushed over the hilt of her zanpakutō. A little frisson of something passed through her, a wordless encouragement, and she lifted her hand instead to brush a few loose hairs out of her face. She didn’t have to push herself beyond her limits every single day—that would be worse for her in the long run. But doing just a little more each time, ignoring the pain in her ribcage for just a _little_ longer… she could do that.

* * *

“Ow.” Karin wrinkled her nose from her spot on the mat, tipping her head back to look Ishida in the face. “How are you good at this? You’re a stick.” It was an exaggeration, but not that much of one.

Ishida leveled her with a distinctly-unimpressed look. “And your tact is as delicate as ever,” he replied flatly. He stepped back, though, giving her space to climb to her feet. “In any case, brute force will only take you so far in hakuda. It is good for blows to be strong, but more important that they are precise, and best utilize the momentum of combat. Fēng-sensei is even smaller than you, but I’ve no doubt she could topple people much more physically imposing without difficulty.”

“Yeah, but that’s what I don’t get. Momentum? I know what that _is_ , but I don’t get how to use it here. Isn’t hand to hand just hitting people so it hurts?” She’d seen the aftermath of enough street brawls in the Rukongai to know what they looked like. “I wish she’d just teach us how to use reiatsu in a hit. I bet I could knock him out in one punch.”

Ishida sighed heavily. “And what if something came along that was stronger than Moribito, then?”

Karin blinked. “…more reiatsu?”

She scowled under the look he gave her. “I know, I know. But that guy pisses me off so much I just want to—”

“Why?”

“Eh?” Karin halted mid-explanation and looked up, catching Ishida’s eyes. “Why what?”

“Why is it so important to you that you beat him? Has he said something to you?” He sounded… suspicious? Wary? She couldn’t decide what the tone meant; it was too carefully-contained. 

She shook her head, uncurling her fists. “No, but I can see him thinking it, you know? And that smug look he gets on his face every time he knocks me down—like I’m a bug and he’s being _nice_ by not stepping on me.”

Ishida broke eye contact, glancing away. His eyes narrowed slightly. “…that might change if you started associating with different people.” His posture was unnaturally stiff, making him look even more awkward than he usually did.

Karin punched him in the stomach. 

It wasn’t a great hit—he’d obviously been surprised, though he’d stepped into the blow apparently by reflex—but she made solid contact, and he doubled over partway, arms wrapping around his abdomen. 

“Sorry. It’s just it sounded like that was about to turn into a ‘don’t hang out with me, Karin, because I’m such an outcast and people hate me so they’ll hate you too’ speech. And that would be a waste of perfectly good air.” She shook out her hand. Damn. He might _look_ like a stick, but hitting him hurt.

He was staring at her, mouth slightly ajar, glasses askew and several hairs knocked from their places. “You—”

“Ishida.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Not _everyone_ hates you. And I don’t want to be friends with anyone who does. So put a cork in it and teach me about this momentum stuff.” 

He straightened, evening out his glasses and getting back some sense of equilibrium. Clearing his throat, he nodded. “Of course.”

* * *

“Um, so… the thing about kidō is that you have to maintain concentration all the way through. It doesn’t get easier after it starts—actually, the more power you put into it, the harder it is to contain.” Yuzu rubbed awkwardly at the back of her head. “So… until the moment you release it, your focus should be directed _inward_ , in a way. I’m sorry; I’m not explaining this very well.”

Uryū shook his head. “No, I think that what you’re saying makes sense. We should concentrate on keeping the spell stable until release.”

“Right!” She visibly straightened, dropping her hand to join her other one, folded neatly in front of her. “You don’t have to force it. Just guide it. If you have enough reiryoku to do the spell, it’ll happen. It’s just better to get the timing right, and try not to lose any of the power before releasing the charge. Weak kidō are either the result of not enough reiryoku or not enough control of it. If you have the second problem, just adding more energy won’t help.”

Karin frowned. “Can you show us? Maybe with a spell that we can see before it’s done?” 

Yuzu nodded. “Sure, okay. Uh, if you want to move over this way, I promise not to hit you with it, but it’ll be easier to see than from behind…” She gestured to a spot on her left.

Uryū shifted over, Karin beside him, and tilted his head, focusing his senses on what Yuzu was doing. The difference between using reiryoku and reishi was still posing him some problems, but he suspected that if he could get a better idea of what the real difference was in the way they were channeled, the obstacles would disappear in short order. 

Extending both hands, Yuzu held them at chin height, forming a rough triangle by angling them so that her index fingers and thumbs almost touched. Her shoulders lifted and settled backwards as she pulled in a deep breath. “ _Ye lord! Mask of blood and flesh, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man!_ " As they watched, a ball of red light, faintly tinged with magenta, formed in front of Yuzu’s palm. At first the size of a peach pit, it wobbled for a moment at the edges, then steadied, expanding in size like a soap bubble, but never losing the near-perfect spherical shape it had.

" _Inferno and pandemonium, the sea barrier surges, march on to the south!_ " The fluctuations in Yuzu’s reiatsu were minimal; she moved energy into the spell at a very steady rate, and it grew accordingly.

" _Hadō #31: Shakkahō!_ ” 

At the moment of release, the sphere was about as big as her head. When the incantation finished, Yuzu’s reiatsu surged, pushing the spell away from her and releasing it at the same time. Only then did the _Shakkahō_ gain the flamelike edge it was known for, and flew unerringly towards the target at the far end of the field, bathing the ground beneath it in eerie light. 

It hit square in the middle of the target, obliterating the whole thing and singeing the edges of those immediately to either side upon impact. 

Uryū’s brows approached his hairline. “That was very impressive, Yuzu-san,” he said, blinking downfield at the smoking pole where the target had been. It had also been exceptionally informative, and rather illustrative of what she’d been saying. 

“When did you learn 31?” Karin added, eyes wide. 

Yuzu coughed, and it was hard to tell in the relative dark, but her face might have gone pink. “I borrowed a copy of the Kidō Encyclopedia from the library. Kozu-sensei said it was okay, as long as I practiced safely.”

There was a short pause, and then Uryū stood. “Well, I think I’ll try as well, though perhaps with a spell slightly lower on the list. Karin-san?”

Shaking herself, the other twin nodded. “Yeah. But you’ve got to watch us, Yuzu, and tell us what we’re doing wrong.”

“I… okay,” Yuzu agreed. “Ishida-san, why don’t you try first?”

* * *

Karin didn’t really understand her inner world all that much. 

It had taken her a long time to even find the place, and now that she was here, it didn’t make a ton of sense. It was a flat, dull plane, mostly, with the springiness of turf under her feet without any actual turf. The sky above her seemed to go on forever, thick with grey clouds that moved past slowly, only to be replaced by more of them. The ground was pockmarked, like several asteroids had at some point slammed into it, leaving it cracked and pitted. She’d stood next to one of the holes once, looking down into it, but it was dark and she couldn’t see how far it went. 

Without even a stone to drop down and listen for, she wasn’t going to risk the exploration just yet. 

It had taken her a couple of weeks to find her zanpakutō spirit, but it hadn’t been too hard in the end—it was a bright red against the grey and bleak blue-black of everything else. 

It was also a _bird_ , which she privately thought was kind of lame. It looked like a cross between one of those parrots from Madagascar in the living world—Yuzu had told her the word was _macaw_ —and a crane of some kind. It had a triangular head with a skinny yellow beak, a long neck, a red body with a few yellow or orange bits, and a really long tail, almost like a peacock but without the fan thing. Which was good, because if her zanpakutō spirit was a _peacock_ , she was going to demand a new asauchi.

At least it didn’t look as silly as Zabimaru. Renji had manifested his zanpakutō for a demonstration yesterday—as soon as she got over being surprised, she’d had to work pretty hard not to laugh. The way he’d scowled at her made it clear that she hadn’t totally succeeded in stifling her amusement though. 

But seriously, part of his soul was a _baboon with a snake for a tail_. 

So maybe a bird wasn’t that badass, but at least she didn’t have to worry about monkey jokes.

The spirit watched her with one black eye as she approached, plopping herself down crosslegged in front of it. 

“So. You gonna tell me your name today?”

It blinked. “Unlikely.” It had a feminine voice, but she knew Yoruichi—she wasn’t going to make any guesses about what gender it was until it said so or she got its name.

“Why the heck not? I found you, I keep finding you, we’ve been talking in circles for a month now. What do you want, anyway?” Karin crossed her arms, glaring at it.

Not one of its feathers so much as ruffled. “If I just told you, I wouldn’t get it.”

“Ugh. I hate riddles. Why can’t you be straightforward?” 

“If I just told you, _you_ wouldn’t get it.”

Overgrown chicken thought it was damn clever, didn’t it? Sighing heavily, Karin flopped backwards onto the springy not-turf, keeping her arms folded over her chest. “Well, come on then. Do that thing where you ask me stupid probing questions and I hate it.” 

Renji had said that sometimes zanpakutō felt the need to draw answers to such questions out of their wielders, in an attempt to push the wielder into necessary growth. Karin wasn’t sure she believed that, but at least it would do more than spit witticisms and platitudes at her. 

“Your friend with the glasses asked you an interesting question the other day.”

Karin half-raised herself at the shoulders to look over at the spirit’s face. “Ishida?”

“Mm. He asked you why you need to defeat the other boy so badly.” The bird arched its neck, picking its way over to her side on long, graceful legs, so that it could more easily peer down at her face. 

“Yeah, and I told him.”

It settled on the ground, folding its legs underneath it. This close, she noted that it was warm, like a sun-baked stone. “In a way, yes. But here is a better question: why do you feel the need to be the best?” 

Karin stiffened. “I don’t,” she replied, unusually slowly. 

“Oh, so you didn’t take the standing record for shikai as a personal challenge, then?”

“I… that’s not the same as wanting to be the best. I just think it’s good to have goals, is all.” She turned her face away slightly, looking down the nearly-featureless plane that served for ground here. It was so flat she probably saw miles ahead, until it grew totally indistinct near the horizon point.

“Goals that, upon completion, would make you in some measureable, acknowledgeable way _better_ than everyone who came before you,” the spirit persisted. 

Karin groaned, separating her arms so she could cover her face with her hands. “It’s not like that, okay? You don’t get it. It’s not about ‘best.’ It’s just… I just…” She clenched her jaw. 

“I’m not having this argument with you right now. Just leave me alone. It’s not fair that you can ambush me when I’m sleeping.”

She heard a rustle when the spirit rose to its feet. 

“As you wish, but you will have to answer eventually.”

Karin rolled over onto her side and willed herself out of the inner world.

* * *

She woke, still groggy, in her own room. 

It was hard to tell what time it was, but if she took a guess, she’d suppose maybe four in the morning or so. She could make out the others in the gloom; Yuzu was tucked into the fetal position on her bed, both arms wrapped around a stuffed lion with a fluffy orange mane and brown plastic eyes that caught the spare light coming in from the window. 

Situated in the center of the room was Ishida, gangly limbs folded into the cot they’d dragged in from their father’s clinic about a week ago, when going back to his own room yielded strangers passed out on his bed often as not. It probably wasn’t comfortable, and he still huffed about ‘propriety’ at least once a day, but at least he knew for sure that no one else had drooled on it… or worse. 

The dormitory wasn’t really meant to hold three people, but they made do. 

Even though their house was big enough for each of them to have their own space, Karin and Yuzu had always shared. Karin had never in her life slept completely by herself in a room. To have one more person was just a little extra white noise to her. 

_One more light to chase away the dark_. 

“Shut up,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes closed. Pulling her blankets up to her chin, Karin lay awake for a while, listening to the steady sounds of their breaths, and the gentle rustle as Yuzu pulled her knees in tighter towards her chest.

In time, as it always did, sleep found her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
> _Shakkahō_ – 赤火砲 – “Red Fire Cannon.” It’s Hadō #31, and produces a ball of red fire of varying size. It’s one of the go-to offensive spells in the series.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Man, I love these kids. They have some issues to work out, all of them. My hope is that those issues are distinct and interesting, because the majority of this fic revolves around taking steps to solve them, and also worldbuilding. Though other characters will be making (hopefully) amusing appearances in future chapters. 
> 
> Also, it has been brought to my attention indirectly (mostly by reviews) that “Karin and Yuzu do Shin’ō” is a whole subgenre in Bleach fanfic. I didn’t know this, though I probably should have. I’ve read surprisingly few fics in this fandom, which might make me a bad fan/writer/whatever. :/ 
> 
> In any case, my aim in pointing this out was to apologize in advance for any similarities this bears to any other story in its subgenre. Because I haven’t read such stories, I have no earthly idea how well-trod these particular paths are, and so if my selection of zanpakutō or plot points or abilities or whatever bears a resemblance to someone else’s, I am sorry, and I hope I can be forgiven for not reading all of the rest of these works just to make sure I’m doing something different.
> 
> * * *
> 
> My gratitude and affection to those who’ve taken the time to review. When I run out of self-generated motivation, I think of you guys first, and keep on keepin’ on.


	4. December

“Today, we will be taking a short break from our usual history lessons to learn about the various branches of Soul Society’s military in their current incarnations.” Ōnabara stood at the front of the classroom, hands folded comfortably behind his back. He never lectured from notes, leaving Yuzu to wonder just how long he’d been delivering the lessons for. Maybe she should ask her dad if he knew, next time she saw him.

Flipping to a new page in her notebook, Yuzu held her pen poised above it, tilting her head slightly to hear better. Even though there was a whole nearly-empty lecture hall, she, Karin, and Ishida still sat near the middle, and off to the left side. 

“As most of you are likely already aware, Soul Society’s combat capability is split into three branches. The smallest branch is the Kidō Corps. They are composed of elite kidō practitioners, and hold most of the advanced kidō-related duties in Soul Society. They are often responsible for maintaining seals on holy relics, ensuring the function of longstanding spells on the Seireitei and other parts of the Soul Society, and the operation of Senkaimon.” Ōnabara paused for a moment. “Once, they were also responsible for the operation of the Sōkyoku.”

Yuzu glanced up; Ōnabara was looking directly at Ishida, and it wasn’t long before pretty much everyone else had turned to do so as well. 

Ishida himself stared back impassively, but his jaw was tight—she could see the muscle in it jumping. Their teacher might have meant it as a neutral observation, but it was charged with so much meaning that it was impossible to imagine everyone saw it the same way.

For the first time, Yuzu thought she might really understand a little piece of how it felt for him to be here. Pursing her lips, she met Fujita’s obvious glare with one of her own. She shifted in slightly closer to Ishida in her chair, and observed Karin doing the same from the other side. 

Ōnabara cleared his throat, and the tense moment eased. 

“Of course, this is not all they do. But the rest of their responsibilities are not public information, and do not pass beyond the members and the Central 46.” He raised both shoulders, letting them fall again. “Then again, the same goes for the higher-level functions of any of the branches.”

“After the Kidō Corps, the next branch is the Onmitsukidō. Agents of this organization are expected to be among the very best at Hohō techniques and stealth tactics, including concealing their reiatsu. In addition, most branches of the Onmitsukidō require that their members be able to defend themselves against all manner of enemies without the use of weapons, and so hakuda specialists are common there.”

Nishimura raised his hand, speaking when Ōnabara nodded at him. “As I understand it, sir, the Onmitsukidō is subsumed by the Second Division of the Gotei 13.” 

Whatever attention hadn’t dispersed when Ōnabara spoke did then, and Yuzu let herself relax slightly, sighing through her nose and settling back into her chair. 

“Thank you.” Ishida spoke so quietly she almost didn’t hear him, and Yuzu dipped her chin, smiling slightly. 

“Anytime,” she whispered back.

As it turned out, Nishimura’s quasi-question had been a good one. Apparently, while the Onmitsukidō was technically distinct from the Second, the first five seats of the division led the five branches of the stealth force. Yuzu wondered how much of a separation that really was, but for the moment, she took the notes down faithfully. 

“And of course,” Ōnabara said, “There is the Gotei 13. By far the largest of the three, it also has the most diverse responsibilities. Shinigami are responsible for entering the living world and performing konsō, as well as purifying Hollows and protecting Soul Society from threats both internal and external.” 

It went without saying that the last was soon going to be incredibly necessary. 

“The captain of each squad, properly addressed as ‘taichō,’ acts as the head of the Division. They are responsible for determining the character of the group as well as what specialization, if any, it will have. At present, only four divisions have particular specializations, though there are a variety of unique duties that others may take on, such as the Ninth’s publication of the _Seireitei Bulletin_. The four specialized divisions are the Second, the Fourth, the Eleventh, and the Twelfth. Despite what you may have heard, each Division is of equal status within the Seireitei, and it is expressly forbidden for captains to interfere in the squads of others.”

He went on to list the names of all the current taichō and fukutaichō, and Yuzu frowned at the list. There were major gaps in the current leadership of the Gotei 13. Three missing captains, not yet replaced, one vice-captain out of commission, and still no fukutaichō in the Thirteenth. She had to wonder how the Fifth was even _functional_ at the moment.

The situation, Yuzu realized, was a lot more dire than it seemed out in the Rukongai.

* * *

“Ha!” Karin grinned broadly down at Ishida. “Finally got you.”

He blinked. “Well, yes, that was the idea of me attacking in exactly the way I told you I would.” 

Her face dropped into a frown. “Yeah, fine. But that’s still the first time I made that throw work.” She offered a hand down and pulled him back to his feet when he accepted it. Moving to the end of the mat, she took up one of the water containers they’d brought to practice and tossed it in his direction, grabbing another for herself and pulling out the cork in it with her teeth. 

Slumping gracelessly at the edge of the mat, she stretched her legs out in front of her onto the grass, reminded uncomfortably of the feel of the ground in her inner world. 

Ishida lowered himself into a seat beside her with considerably more control than she’d bothered with, taking the stopper from his canteen with his fingers. “You’re improving a great deal,” he said, almost apologetically. 

Karin _hmphed_ , knocking him in the bicep with her elbow, but not with any real violence. Setting her canteen between her knees, she braced her arms behind her and leaned back on them, watching Yuzu go by on the track. Karin thought her sister was getting a lot better; she had a decent mile time now, and was training to manage longer distances. 

In all three of them, the physical changes were becoming obvious. Karin, always thin and wiry, hadn’t been affected all that much in this respect by adolescence, but she really liked the contours of the muscles she’d developed with the training, and the feel of being in a body that was strong and fast and tough enough to do more every day. 

Yuzu had always been softer, made of gentler shapes. But in her, too, the changes were apparent. She didn’t have to ask for help lifting heavy things anymore, and more than once she’d thrown people in hakuda class that Karin hadn’t even been sure she could _move_. 

Even the stickman didn’t look so much like a stick these days. 

Much as she relished in their growing competency, however, things weren’t exactly smooth sailing all the way around. No amount of coaching from either of them seemed to be able to coax Yuzu into hitting properly with her practice sword, for one. Karin sometimes wondered if her sister was ever going to be able to use her zanpakutō or not. 

Ishida’s kidō ran the gamut from dangerously-good to dangerously- _bad_ depending on the day. Apparently something to do with his Quincy powers or whatever. 

She herself still hadn’t once beat Moribito at hakuda. She had a feeling Fēng kept matching them up for exactly that reason. It felt like something she _must_ do now, no matter what. She’d made him an obstacle in her own head, and she was going to tear him down, one way or another. 

_Yes, but why?_

She scowled, and turned to look at Ishida. “Does your zanpakutō ever interrupt you when you’re thinking or bug you in your dreams? Mine does; it’s really annoying.”

He shook his head slowly. “No. But I’d honestly rather it did.”

“How do you mean?”

“I haven’t met it.”

That got Karin’s undivided attention. She sat all the way up, leaning slightly forward and tilting herself sideways to peer up at his profile. “Like… at all?” 

“Like at all,” he confirmed, mimicking her speech pattern dryly. “I can’t seem to find it.”

“But… you got into your inner world so fast, I kinda figured you’d be the first one to meet it.” If Karin were being honest with herself, she had also been pretty sure that Ishida would be the first one to get shikai. He was already an experienced fighter, and obviously talented. She couldn’t deny that. But even a slacker like Matsuda had at least _met_ his spirit by now. 

“I’ve been coming and going from my inner world for years,” he said, his chest falling with a deep exhale. “But as far as I can tell, nothing has changed. Lucia is still there, but no new things have appeared at all.”

“Lucia?” 

His mouth pulled into a grimace. “The manifestation of my Quincy powers. She was there before I ever touched an asauchi.” 

Karin scratched the back of her head. “You sure you can even imprint on a zanpakutō? I mean, what if shinigami powers and Quincy powers don't mix?” It’s not like anyone would know—when else in history had one ever tried to become the other as well?

“There’s no reason they shouldn’t. After all, they rely on completely different abilities and systems. I never really used reiryoku for anything before.”

“Well, that’s weird. You’d think if they all had reiryoku, they’d have figured out _some_ technique to use it for.” Karin shrugged. That kind of theory stuff wasn’t really her area. It wasn’t like she needed to know anyway; Ishida was strange, but that was fine by her. 

Her eyes followed Yuzu as she completed another lap around. Sugitani was on the track now, as well. He trained at night most of the time, too, but he didn’t bother them and they didn’t bother him, so it worked out.

“Is Yuzu-san all right?” Ishida asked abruptly. 

Karin blinked, but the question didn’t surprise her. Yuzu always started acting just a little more withdrawn around this time of year. For a moment, she was silent, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth, and then she pushed out a heavy sigh. “It’s the time of year.”

“I see. Is she particularly averse to winter?”

“No.” Karin shook her head, the end of her ponytail tickling her neck. Rubbing irritably at the spot, she continued. “We used to have a bigger family, you know. Back in the living world. We had a mom, and an older brother.” She swallowed, a lump already beginning to form in her throat. “They both died. We thought it was an accident, a car or something, and dad brought us here to Soul Society after. It wasn’t until we were older that he told us they were both eaten by a Hollow.”

She felt Ishida shift beside her, but he was quiet, and she was grateful for that. It made continuing a little less difficult. Momentum, maybe; lots of things seemed to come back to that lately. 

“They died in June, actually, but… on the day it happened, dad always takes us on a trip through a Senkaimon into the living world. We visit them and have a picnic, and it’s… not happy, exactly, it’s more like… comfortable. But our mom used to really like Christmas, and there’s nothing like that here, so in December it feels… the most different, because they’re gone.” Karin squeezed her teeth together, looking at nothing in particular. 

For several moments, no one spoke. 

“Do you think it would help if there was some kind of gathering, perhaps on the twenty-fourth? I’m familiar with some aspects of the holiday; it doesn’t seem difficult to manage on a small scale. It would not be the same, obviously, but…” He said the words carefully, delicately almost, like he was wary of offending, or intruding where he didn’t belong. 

Karin didn’t usually spend a lot of time weighing her words, but this time she did. For so long, Christmas had been the forbidden holiday, in a way. They’d never talked about why they’d stopped celebrating, but they’d also never dared suggest resuming the tradition without mom and Ichigo. But maybe… “You know Ishida, I think she’d really like that. Dad probably can’t do any of the planning and stuff, but I bet he could show. And I think I can… I think I can help set it up.”

* * *

Yuzu’s inner world wasn’t that strange. Or she didn’t think so, anyway, at least not compared to some of the things she’d heard the others talking about. 

It was, in point of fact, a garden, or at least part of one. Situated in the grounds of an old-fashioned castle, the sort she imagined the real nobles must live in, the garden was neat, quiet, and serene. 

It was also half-dead. 

The parts she’d actually been able to access so far were a polished engawa, and the garden itself, which had several flower beds, a still pond with a bridge arched over it, leading to a room-sized island in the center. On the island sat a massive, withered tree, its bark nearly black. 

Most of the flowers were wilted, too, beyond recognition, and it was perpetually raining on everything, the only place safe from the shower the covered roof of the engawa itself. She’d tried the doors—they didn’t open. 

A few of the blooms were alive, though, mostly young plants, and if she wasn’t mistaken, that cluster of bluebells was new. 

“The azaleas seem to be doing well,” she said, stepping off the engawa and into the garden proper. She never manifested in her inner world with shoes, so she felt the wet earth beneath her bare feet when she alighted, soft but not completely sodden despite the unceasing water from above. 

“They are simple to nurture here.” The voice belonged to a woman, some years older in appearance than Yuzu herself. She was also barefoot, but that was where the similarity between them ended. The spirit had sheets of black hair pinned neatly in place, a cluster of fresh flowers positioned on the left side of the style. Her face was unpainted, but she wore a formal furisode, the color of the silk a gradient from pale pink at the shoulders to deep purple at the hem, with a thickening pattern of white petals toward the bottom and a heavy silver obi.

Yuzu looked around. Water lilies had joined the lotus flowers in the pond, and she almost thought to go looking for koi or frogs, but somehow she knew there wouldn’t be any. Her eyes moved to the tree. Though the various dead things gave the garden an unquenchable melancholy, that more than anything filled her with a profound sense of sadness. 

“Do you know what kind of tree that is supposed to be?” she asked.

The spirit rose from where she had been kneeling, fixing Yuzu with a petal-pink stare. “Not yet.”

“Yet?” But it was already dead—it had to have been something before, rather than something that still had yet to be determined.

The spirit beckoned her forward, and Yuzu crossed the bridge to the small island, coming to stand beside her. The woman took Yuzu’s hand, uncurling her fingers and pressing her palm to the bark of the dead tree. 

Only… it wasn’t quite dead. She could feel something in there, dormant but alive. The bark was rough on her palm, the spirit’s skin satiny on the back of her hand—a marked contrast. 

“Yet.” The woman repeated. “Perhaps one day we will both know, when you have cultivated it.”

Yuzu blinked, drawing her hand away from the bark. “What if I can’t?”

The spirit hummed, moving away from the tree to the edge of the pond. Despite the rain, which never touched her anyway, and despite wearing a kimono Yuzu would be scared to do _anything_ in, she sat on the bank, pulling up the fabric at her knees and dipping her feet into the water. “Only you can decide that.”

Frowning, Yuzu followed, crouching beside the spirit and folding her hands on top of her knees. The pond rippled slightly when the woman moved her feet under the water, bobbing the flowers up and down. They floated gently away, drifting until the force was no longer enough to keep them going and they stilled again. 

“If I could decide its fate, it wouldn’t be dead in the first place,” she pointed out.

The spirit smiled indulgently. “You must _decide_ to climb a mountain in order to climb it, Yuzu, even if the decision alone does not make it so. But if you decide not to, you never will.” 

“What if I don’t know what decision to make? What if I make the wrong one?”

_What if I decide, and fail anyway?_

“Then you will suffer. And perhaps, so will others around you. But you must choose, Yuzu. You cannot hide from this until the bad things have passed. You cannot wait until the stakes are lesser. If you try, everything you do will be halfway, and that _will_ bring suffering. Embrace this or do not, but if you choose it, grasp it with both arms and never let go.”

Yuzu felt herself deflate slightly, and fixed her eyes on the pond in front of her, propping her chin on her arms. “I have to think it through,” she said, her voice not rising above a murmur. 

The spirit stopped moving beside her. “Then do so. But do not let thoughtfulness become an excuse for stasis.”

She nodded, though she was anything but certain.

* * *

“So… why did I have to get this tree again?”

Renji stood in the doorway of the Kurosaki house, the trunk of a small evergreen tilted over his shoulder, and pine needles clinging to his hair. Beside him, Rukia was carrying a cake in a bakery box, probably from the same excursion into Karakura town. 

“Decorated trees are traditionally part of the holiday,” Uryū replied, pointing to an emptied corner of the living room, where a tree stand was already set up. “If you could set that in there, we can get started.”

He accepted the cake from Rukia, stepping carefully around Karin and making his way into the kitchen. There was little by way of free counter-space left, but that was fine. Most of the other sweets were cooling on racks, nearly ready to be frosted. The cake looked quite professional, with mostly white frosting, the strawberries and sprigs of mint giving it the distinct color scheme of Christmas. 

No sooner had he found a spot for it than a frustrated half-growl sounded from back the way he’d come, and he turned, retracing his steps until he found Karin, picking at drying glue on her fingers. Somehow, she was covered in loose bits of tinsel. 

“I take it wreath construction is proving difficult.”

She glared up at him, eyes half lidded. “What tipped you off, genius? I can’t do this craft stuff. Yuzu’s the only one in our family who’s good at anything like this.” She hoisted her half-finished wreath in the air, brandishing it at him like a weapon.

He examined it. Actually, apart from being a bit sparse, and the inclusion of the tinsel, which was not a traditional component as far as Uryū was aware, it wasn’t a terrible start. “Here,” he said, holding out his hand for it. “We can salvage this, with some work. Hand me a few more of those boughs, and the shears.”

Karin hurried to comply, grabbing the items off the floor where she’d been working. Her wire base wasn’t the sturdiest, but it was good enough, and he could compensate. 

Cutting a length of the thin floral wire from the spool, Uryū picked a gap and wove a new bough into it, working in the clockwise direction Karin had already established. Placing the wire between his teeth, he used both hands to set the branch in place, dabbing a little craft glue where it hit the frame for extra hold. The wire bit into his fingers as he wound it tightly around the base of the bough, securing it with a quick knot. 

“Scissors.” They landed handle-first in his hand, and he trimmed the excess away. 

Repeating the process several more times yielded them a plush, neat circle of fir, and he handed it back to her, pointing at the craft glue. “You don’t need much, but you should add some of those pine cones. And the small bells. Let me know when that’s done, and I’ll do the ribbon.”

“Uh… yeah, sure Ishida.”

He nodded, then headed for the living room to see what Renji and Rukia had done with the tree. 

In retrospect, he probably shouldn’t have left them without instructions. 

“…Rukia-san.”

She turned on her heel, smiling broadly. “I decorated your tree, Ishida. The man at the store told me that you’re supposed to put ornaments on them.” 

“Yes, but…” Uryū looked at Renji—

—who only shrugged helplessly behind Rukia’s back, shaking his head. 

“Generally speaking, it is best to pick ornaments based on a color scheme or a theme, not one of everything in the store.” There were also no lights, and the ornament at the top looked suspiciously like a cartoon rabbit. He wasn’t sure how she’d managed to _find_ such a thing, but she had. 

“Oh.” Rukia tilted her head to the side, frowning thoughtfully. “I suppose it’s a bit hard to see the tree, isn’t it?”

Uryū refrained only barely from pinching the bridge of his nose. He could feel the headache coming on already. “Go… go get some of the tinsel from Karin-san, and bring it back here. We’ll… figure it out.”

* * *

Yuzu shuffled aside several of the keys on her ring of them, looking for the one that worked to her family’s front door. Her dad had asked her to come by and have some tea, and while she’d never have said _no_ , the time of the year made it somehow impossible to do anything but tear herself away from her homework and make her way over immediately. 

From the outside, the house looked dark, and she wondered if perhaps he’d been caught up working late in the clinic or something. Well, if he had she could just put the tea on herself and wait up for him. Sliding the key into the lock, Yuzu opened the slightly-sticky door with her shoulder, bending preemptively to remove her shoes. 

The lights suddenly clicked on overhead. Looking up, she promptly overbalanced and fell over. 

“Surprise!”

“Merry Christmas, Yuzu!”

For a very long few seconds, Yuzu remained on the floor, eyes wide with shock. Standing in her family’s living room were Karin, Ishida, a woman she didn’t know and Abarai-sensei, and her father…

…Her father was wearing a santa suit. 

All of them looked at her expectantly, and she picked up on the tense half-frown slowly overtaking Karin’s face. There was a terribly-decorated Christmas tree in the corner, not one decoration even remotely matching the others and no lights to be seen. A fancy wreath dripping with silver bells was tacked onto the archway into the kitchen, and food covered every visible surface, mostly sweets. The air was scented with gingerbead and evergreen, and before she’d even consciously decided to do it, Yuzu was smiling, from the very bottom of herself. 

The tension evaporated right out of Karin, and everyone else a half second later, and then her dad was pulling her to her feet and swinging her around, and everyone else was laughing at them and Yuzu was laughing too, until there were tears in her eyes but just for a moment—just for a little tiny bead of time— none in her heart.

She wrapped her arms around her father, grinning into his shoulder. “Thanks, dad,” she murmured. 

“Don’t thank me,” he said back, just as quietly. “Thank them.”

* * *

After the initial moment of panic, when Karin hadn’t been so sure this was a good idea after all, and the usual ridiculous exaggerated behavior from their dad, the evening was actually pretty quiet. 

Ishida had introduced them both to Rukia, and they’d explained between them who exactly she was and why she was present. Apparently, this was the lady Ishida had invaded the Seireitei to save. Karin didn’t quite get it, since Rukia didn’t seem to be around much, and she wondered if they were even really friends. But then, knowing Ishida, they could be—he didn’t exactly loosen up much even around her and Yuzu. 

Right now, though, Karin had bigger problems.

“Hey, you wanna say that again?” She balled her hands into fists and put them on her hips, scowling at Renji.

“I’m just saying it sounds like your zapakutō spirit is a chicken.” Renji said it through a mouthful of cookie that _she’d_ decorated, a few stray crumbs escaping. 

Karin’s eye twitched. “Oh yeah? At least it’s not an overgrown baboon.” 

“Hey! Zabimaru is not ‘overgrown.’” 

She supposed there was really no arguing on the baboon part, but still, of all the things to take issue with…

“Jeez, Abarai, you need to work on your trash talk. Weren’t you part of the Eleventh?” 

Renji swallowed, wiping crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand. “You sure you should be trash talking me at all, kid? I _am_ in charge of your grades.”

Karin scoffed. “Yeah right. Like you’d mark me down for making fun of you. And who’re you calling kid anyway?” 

It was, in all honesty, basically by reflex that she went in to kick him. Considering that her father ambushed her in the hallways of her own home, and had been doing it since she was a little kid, it just felt normal. 

Renji easily caught the blow in his hand, but then shifted his glance to her face, raising a tattooed brow. “Huh. That had some force behind it. You play any sports before the academy or…?” He let go of her foot, straightening from where he’d bent his knees to absorb the impact. Probably also instinct—he wouldn’t have needed more than a finger to do the job. 

“Used to. Soccer.” She shrugged.

He blinked once, then grinned. “Soccer, huh? That’s the one with the black and white ball and the nets, right?”

“Yep.”

“That’s awesome. I’ve been trying to start a divisional soccer team. You should join when you graduate.” Renji nodded decisively.

“Who says I’m joining _your_ division? It’s gotta be kinda crappy if they have a guy like you for a fukutaichō.”

For some reason, Rukia, not too far away, sputtered and began to choke on her drink. Ishida handed her a napkin, and Yuzu moved in to rub her back. 

Renji crossed his arms. “You’re a mouthy brat, aren’t you?” She didn’t miss the jagged smile he was wearing, though. 

“At least I’m not a dumb monkey.”

* * *

The walk back from the house was nearly silent. Renji and Rukia had parted from them a couple of blocks back, headed toward their divisions, while the three of them made for the academy. Yuzu walked between Ishida and Karin, her stomach full and her insides warm. 

It had been such a long time since she’d last done anything like that; celebrated anything in particular. They had birthdays, of course, and their dad typically went overboard about them, but there was something about having other people around that made it… different. Not necessarily better or worse, but worth doing in its own way. 

They paused to allow Ishida to make the obligatory check of his own room, which he found for once entirely unoccupied. 

“Looks like you can keep your extra space this evening,” he said, turning back towards the both of them. 

Karin nodded, but Yuzu shuffled her feet for a moment. She had a feeling this might not go over well, but she thought it was warranted, and wanted to do it, so…

“Sorry.” Without exactly explaining what she was apologizing for, she stepped forward and hugged a very startled Ishida, winding her arms under his and squeezing briefly. “Thanks, for doing that. It meant a lot.”

He was awkwardly stiff, spine straight and muscles tense. He did pat her on the head, though; hesitantly, almost as if he were afraid of damaging her somehow. 

Yuzu stifled the urge to laugh at him, but relented her hold, stepping back. “You don’t get hugged a lot, do you Ishida-san?”

He cleared his throat. “Not especially, no.” There was a pause. “Also… it is not necessary to address me so formally, if you don’t want to. Ishida or Uryū would both be fine.” He shifted his eyes to include Karin as well. “For either of you.”

Karin crossed her arms. “As long as you do the same. No more of this ‘Karin-san’ stuff.”

Yuzu nodded. “Sure thing. We’ll see you tomorrow, Uryū.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Engawa_ – 縁側 – “Side edge.” Typically a wooden strip of flooring immediately before windows and storm shutters inside traditional Japanese rooms. Also refers to the veranda outside the room. 
> 
> _Furisode_ – 振袖 – “Swinging sleeves.” A very formal style of kimono with really fancy patterns and super-wide bell sleeves. Traditionally the most formal kimono worn by younger, unmarried women.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Christmas isn’t celebrated in Japan the same way it is in other countries, being mostly a commercial holiday or one for friends/lovers (and almost never religious), but I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to imagine that the Kurosakis celebrated it, since some families do.
> 
> Also, Renji and Karin trash-talk each other. Probably they will eventually spar a lot. This is just how I see them getting along.


	5. January

Uryū still wasn’t entirely sure about how he felt having the second key to Karin and Yuzu’s room, but he’d stopped trying to give it back. At times like this, when he needed somewhere quiet and not public to study, it was admittedly very convenient. As both of them were still eating dinner, he took his time setting up at Karin’s desk—which might as well have been his, since she did all her homework on her bed. 

He was about twenty pages into his reading on the history of forbidden kidō when he heard a soft scratching sound, like someone running their fingernails lightly over a wooden panel. Frowning, he glanced up, checking the floorboards for any possible mice or other small creatures—which seemed to be startlingly rare inside the Seireitei—but found nothing. 

The scratching sound grew louder, more insistent, and Uryū shifted his eyes to the window, whereupon sat a black cat, its paw scratching at the window ledge. Given the way it stared directly at him, he reached the obvious conclusion immediately, laying his book upside-down on the desk and moving to the window. 

Unlatching it, he slid it open sideways. “Yoruichi? What are you doing here?”

She hopped down from the windowsill, looking around with obvious interest. “This is a girls’ room,” she said, amusement filtering through her masculine tone. “Something you want to tell me, Ishida?”

Uryū felt his face start to heat, an unfortunate automatic response that he really hoped he’d be able to get rid of one day. “No. I mean, yes, the room does belong to Karin and Yuzu, but it's not what you’re implying.” Glancing out the window, half-expecting for someone else to be waiting to ambush him out there, he shut the glass pane again and flipped the latch. 

“Oh? And just what am I implying?” 

He ignored her. “More importantly, I ask again: what are you _doing_ here?”

Yoruichi sighed, shifting slightly, and he caught the glint of something attached to her neck. A band of fabric, but with an oblong shiny bit dangling from it. “Kisuke wants to talk to you. I’m delivering the means.” 

Uryū’s brows knit; he stooped and untied the fabric—silk, probably from his storage closet at the shop—lifting it away from Yoruichi and examining the device on the end. It was about the size of a shogi pawn, or, indeed, the tag on an animal collar, but looked to be made primarily of some kind of smooth metal. It was a little too pearlescent to be steel, but he wasn’t sure what it could be instead. 

“You have to touch it without gloves,” Yoruichi said. “It’ll only work with your thumb print.”

“When did Urahara-san… never mind.” Uryū wasn’t sure he really wanted to know how that man had his fingerprints to begin with. They were far from the oddest thing the shopkeeper had ever been able to procure on whatever notice. 

Yoruichi hopped up on the desk, sitting down next to his book and cocking her head at him expectantly. 

Uryū sighed, setting the device down for a moment and removing his gloves, folding them together and laying them down on top of his book. Unsure which thumb would work, he tried his dominant hand first, pressing the left one to the unblemished metal. 

Something under the surface lit up, giving the whole object a dim, red glow for a moment. Uryū took his hand back, watching with interest as the color of the light changed several times, and then the top layer of the object cleared so that it looked like glass. From within, it projected a wedge of light straight upwards, which flickered a few times before steadying. The result was a flat, translucent screen of sorts, perhaps as wide and tall as his forearm was long. 

“Kisuke!” Yoruichi spoke at the screen, which currently only showed the interior of Urahara Shop’s living room, devoid of people. It looked like the counterpart device was set on the table, facing the back wall, but it was hard to say for sure without more reference. 

The machine projected the sound of feet on tatami flooring and the rustle of clothes, though, and Urahara’s head appeared in the frame from the upper right corner. “Ah, Yoruichi. Right on time.”

He stepped back and settled into a seated position, tipping his hat back slightly with one hand. “And Ishida-kun. Nice to see you.” His mouth slanted up into a lopsided smile. 

He looked, of course, exactly the same. In the nearly four years they’d been acquainted, he’d never really changed at all. 

Uryū wondered for a moment if that would ever be true of him as well, but brushed the thought aside. It wasn’t something to consider right now. “Likewise, Urahara-san.” The extent to which he meant it surprised him a little.

For a moment, the expression on Urahara’s face flickered, losing the sly edge it almost always had, but it was back again so quickly Uryū wondered if he’d merely imagined it.

“I’m calling to give you an update from this end,” the shopkeeper said, reaching slightly past the screen and leaning back again with a cup of tea in his hand. “Nothing major yet, so don’t worry about that. There’s been a bit of an increase in Hollow activity here recently, but no Menos or anything like that. I’ve got some friends in town taking care of it, for the moment.”

“Friends?” Uryū raised an eyebrow. 

Urahara chuckled. “Yes, well. Maybe that’s not quite the right word. But they’re up to it, and they’ve agreed, so… they’re the enemies of our enemy, at least.”

“That sounds much more like you.”

“I’m hurt, Ishida-kun. It’s almost like you don’t believe I could have friends.”

Yoruichi swished her tail. “Speaking of friends, Ishida’s made some—haven’t you, Ishida?” She turned her head to look up at him through feline eyes. If she could smile, she would probably be doing so.

“Is that so?” A glance back at the projection showed Urahara’s fan in front of his face again, obscuring whatever expression he wore, but his voice was one Uryū recognized. It was the same one he had whenever he’d just thought of something that eventually led to several days in the basement making things explode. 

Uryū scowled. “No. Don’t even think about it.”

“Think about what?” Urahara asked mildly. 

“You’re already wondering what kind of friends they are and if you can fit them into your plans somewhere. You can’t. They’re just kids.”

Yoruichi laughed outright, and Urahara lowered his fan, grinning broadly. 

“And just what are you?” he asked, amusement edging the question, softening the underlying sharpness. 

“A volunteer.” Uryū bit the words out harder than he’d intended, but he didn’t regret it. He knew how Urahara operated: he didn’t have the luxury of always seeing people as people. He had to think in terms of what they could do, what they had the potential to be or accomplish. And that was a most excellent way to examine a strategic problem and solve it. 

Uryū knew that no one ever played shogi without sacrificing a few pieces, however. 

Onscreen, Urahara folded the fan; Uryū thought maybe he sighed, but the electronic medium made it difficult to say for sure. His amusement dropped away like an old cloak, and he set his teacup back down on the table offscreen with a soft clink. 

“So are they,” he said solemnly, folding his arms into his sleeves. “I know you don’t want to hear this, Ishida-kun, but I think you understand it already. Anyone at that academy right now is involved in this just as much as you are. Aizen won’t care how old they are, or how trained, if they stand in his way.”

Uryū grit his teeth, but there was undeniable truth in what Urahara said. He could hope that the twins wouldn’t get dragged into the war, but he knew how talented they were. They’d be in squads by the time the Hōgyoku awakened, and because of that, they might be asked to step into the line of fire. There was just no way to guarantee that they wouldn’t become involved. 

“At least if I have the information, I can plan with them in mind,” the other man continued, something almost like sympathy registering alongside the words themselves. “Better that than someone else just throwing them on the pyre as a delay tactic.”

It went without saying that if low-ranked shinigami were deployed in the war, that was most likely what they’d be for. 

There were too many variables to predict. Letting Urahara potentially involve the twins in his plans meant they would surely be in some amount of danger, perhaps more than if they were never sent to the field. But it also meant they would be involved in the way best suited for them. 

He would have preferred to just _ask_ them, but he was deluding himself if he believed they had any choice. 

“Before you involve them in _anything_ , you have to get their permission,” he said, unwilling to bend on at least that much. He wasn’t going to help create another situation like Rukia’s. 

Urahara nodded. “Of course. We’re talking about Isshin’s daughters, aren't we?”

It was not even slightly surprising that he knew. “Yes.”

“All right, so what are they good at?”

Uryū knew he wasn’t interested in Yuzu’s baking or Karin’s impressive soccer maneuvers. He did his best to set aside all the things that immediately came to mind and focus on the cold particulars. Analysis of ability, assessment of potential, nothing else. 

“Yuzu could easily be described as a kidō prodigy. At least one student came into the class with the ability to cast some Hadō and Bakudō without the incantations, and Yuzu has in every way proven that she outmatches her.” Though at any other time this was extremely satisfying to Uryū, he brushed away the feeling. “She demonstrates skill with the soft aspects of hakuda, and a very keen understanding of the academic material we’re given, enough to make connections of her own and think unconventionally. She’s also very perceptive of other people, and one of the most emotionally-intelligent people I’ve ever met.”

He sighed, rolling his shoulders back. “Her general fitness level has increased drastically since we started, but she’s still below the class average in this respect. None of us is using advanced Hohō techniques like _shunpō_ yet, but I suspect given her skill in kidō that once her body can handle it, she’ll at least learn quickly. Her biggest weakness is one of personality: she doesn’t like the idea of hurting people, and this is reflected most in her zanjutsu. She understands the theory and is capable of the motions, but her hits lack power and resolve. In general, she’s uncertain of herself, and I think she may even be questioning whether she wants to be a shinigami at all.” 

He winced, not exactly happy to have said it that way, but Urahara was nodding, taking the information in with that keen-eyed look he had. 

“And what about Karin?”

“Physically, she was much more prepared for the rigors of training. Her zanjutsu is easily among the best in the class, and she’s dedicated to it. Before reiatsu is factored in, she’s also very fast, and probably the closest to actual _shunpō_ out of all of us. Her reiryoku control and kidō are decent, but she’ll never have the skill of a specialist.” He pursed his lips, considering. “She has more strength than I’d expect of someone of her size, but she isn’t very patient, and it makes her hakuda her worst skill by far. She has yet to beat anyone in a sparring match, and it was only recently that she really started to understand the mechanics of the throws and locks.”

Urahara tipped his head to the side. “How about you, Ishida-kun?” His eyes were hooded, a touch of the foxlike cunning returning to his face. 

Uryū pushed his glasses up his nose. That was a loaded question if he’d ever heard one. Still, if he couldn’t even impartially examine his own competencies, he was hardly in a position to be participating in the strategy discussions he’d stipulated admission to. 

“I started with considerable advantage,” he pointed out first. “While I knew only one of the shinigami arts to begin with, I am nevertheless familiar with martial disciplines in general, and this is not the first time I have undergone training for the purpose of learning to fight a threat. I almost certainly have the most reiryoku of anyone here.” He also knew what a real, life-and-death situation was like, something that perhaps only one or two of his classmates could claim.

“As expected, I’m far ahead of my classmates in hakuda.” That was, after all, something he’d already had quite a lot of training for going in. 

Yoruichi made what sounded like a harrumph from beside him. “Of course you are,” she said. “You learned from the best.”

Uryū rolled his eyes. “And the most humble.” Shaking his head, he continued. “I’m also somewhere in the top three with zanjutsu—it’s hard to distinguish myself, Karin, and our classmate Sugitani with respect to that. Kidō is… less consistent. I am still attempting to learn how to manipulate reiryoku generally, though I do not ever find myself lacking it after classes. I have yet to succeed in _shunpō_ , either, for a similar reason.” 

He paused, debating it, then continued. “But my main problem is that I cannot seem to make contact with the spirit of my zanpakutō.” 

Urahara frowned slightly. “Let me see it,” he said, leaning forward so that his face was closer to the screen. 

Uryū complied, the sheath making a whisper of sound against the linen of his sash as he slid it out, laying it on the surface of the desk. Aside from the fact that everything about it was either black or smoky grey, and the particular shape of the tsuba, which was different for everyone, it looked no different from any of the other wakizashi-types he’d seen. Matsuda and Nishimura had them too.

Urahara spent a minute examining it, fingers rubbing at his stubble, before he sat back. “Yoruichi, does it feel abnormal to you?”

She nodded her head, an odd gesture in cat form. “It doesn’t seem to have any reiatsu at all.” 

“Are they supposed to?”

“Kind of.” Urahara rubbed lazily at the back of his neck and shoulder. “It’s almost indistinguishable from the shinigami’s own reiatsu, but in theory if you’re good enough at picking up on it, you can sense it. Try it sometime. Anyway, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

Uryū leveled a flat look at him. “My zanpakutō is possibly non-functional, and you want me to not worry about it? This was the whole reason you sent me here in the first place.”

“It’s functioning just fine,” Urahara said. “If it weren’t, it wouldn’t have changed shape at all in the first place. My guess is you have a difficult sword, is all. That’s not ideal right now, but I can tell you from experience that it’s often the most difficult spirits that end up producing the strongest zanpakutō.” The corner of his mouth curled. “I found Benihime the first time I entered my inner world, and then she didn’t so much as acknowledge my existence for an entire year. She’s still not very nice to me, come to think of it.”

“What if we don’t have that kind of time?” A year might be fine, but then… it might not. The estimate on Aizen’s timeline was only an estimate, after all, and getting to shikai was the fastest way to get himself out of the academy. Exactly what happened after that… Uryū wasn’t sure yet. 

Urahara shrugged. “It’ll happen when it happens. If you want to get there as quickly as possible, there are two things you can do. The first is to start asking yourself questions you know you don't want to answer, and answering them anyway. The sword usually helps, but if you have to do it by yourself, it’s still worth doing.” 

“And the second?”

“Try approaching the problem a different way. You’re probably wandering around in the inner world searching, right?” One of Urahara’s brows disappeared into the shadow cast by the brim of his hat.

“Yes.” How else was he supposed to do it?

“Have you tried talking? Zanpakutō are all different. They respond to different triggers. It might take touch, or a question, or some other thing. Don’t just look, and don’t only look where you expect to find something.” 

Uryū dipped his chin. “I’ll try that then. How are the others doing?”

Urahara accepted the change in topic without protest, apparently done dispensing his wisdom for the moment. “Tessai’s fine, of course. The kids miss you, but Jinta won’t admit it.” He paused for a moment, laying a hand on his hat and tipping his head back. 

“Your father came by.”

There were several beats of utter silence. Uryū clenched his teeth, then forced his jaw to relax, any trace of the almost-smile he’d been wearing yielding to a dark scowl. “What did he want?”

Urahara remained unfazed by the thinly-veiled hostility in the question. “To know where you went. You had to know he’d sense your energy disappearing.”

Of course. What he _hadn’t_ expected was for Ryūken to confront Urahara about it. “What did you tell him?”

“That I’d have to talk to you before I told him anything.” Letting his hand drop, Urahara put it back in the opposite sleeve and sighed. “You sure you want to burn this bridge?”

Uryū’s scowl deepened, etched into his face like something carved in a block of granite. “I’m not the one who set it on fire. My business is none of his anymore; he decided that himself three years ago.”

The shopkeeper inclined his head. “If that’s what you want. But your father isn’t stupid, Ishida-kun. He’ll probably figure it out, if he hasn’t already.” 

“Let him.” 

“Whatever you want,” Urahara said. “Anyway, I probably shouldn’t keep you any longer. I know it’s probably not ideal for you over there, but it sounds like you’re doing all right.”

Uryū considered that for a moment. “Actually… yes. I am.”

The other man grinned. “Glad to hear it. I’ll let you get back to it for now. Say hello to the twins for me.” 

After Uryū agreed to pass on the message, the communication disconnected, leaving a blank projection screen in front of him. Turning to Yoruichi, he arched a brow. “Should I ask Yuzu if she has a cat bed?”

Yoruichi gave him a look, lashing her tail. “You’re hilarious,” she deadpanned.

He cracked a tiny smile. 

“But no, thank you. I’ll wait around long enough to say hello, then be on my way. I’m sure Isshin has plenty of space.”

* * *

Uryū’s dreams, as they often did, deposited him in his inner world. 

The transition was always abrupt, especially so because the world itself was so different from anything that existed in empirical reality. His disorientation faded a little faster every time, though, and when he’d found his feet this time, he glanced around. 

Nothing immediately new to be seen. Perhaps it was time to take Urahara’s advice into consideration. Feeling slightly foolish, Uryū took half a step forward, peering out into the endless whiteness. “Hello?” he called, squinting. “Are you there?” 

What was he supposed to say to a zanpakutō spirit, anyway? How different were they from what Lucia was? To say it was ‘part of his soul’ was such an abstract thing. Which part? No one was so simple that they had only one side. 

As he’d expected, there was no response to his words, and he sighed. What was the other thing? Ask himself questions he didn’t want to answer? Easier said than done. 

What questions didn’t he want to answer? 

Grimacing, he sat down beside the sleeping Lucia, trying to decide what she would be asking him about right now. He’d only been acquainted with her waking self for a very short time. He found her imperious, and haughty, both traits that he was willing to admit he shared from time to time. But she was also resolute, fair, and firmly on his side. Her sense of right and wrong was steady and unshakable. 

Was he looking for something like that, or something completely different?

She’d probably ask him about Ryūken. It was a sore spot for him, one he didn’t like talking about, which was apparently just the kind of thing zanpakutō spirits bothered their wielders with. 

When he spoke, he didn’t direct the words anywhere in particular, unsure where the spirit would be located. 

“My father and I haven’t gotten along for most of my life,” he started, adjusting his legs so they were crossed beneath him. “He rejected his Quincy heritage… I’m not exactly sure when. My grandfather was the one who told me what we were. The one who trained me. Ryūken never approved. Nothing I did was good enough for him.” Uryū wondered if things would have been different, had his mother lived. She was a Quincy, too; his grandfather had told him that. Had she rejected her power the way Ryūken had? Would she have approved of his actions? 

He didn’t know, and he never would. 

“We argued almost constantly. I trained every day, after grandfather died. I wanted—needed—to be stronger than I had been then, but Ryūken was against it. When I was fourteen, he told me to stop training or leave his house.” Uryū shook his head. 

“I doubt he expected me to choose to leave. Even if we didn’t get along, he was all the family I had left. But I couldn’t betray Grandfather’s memory by rejecting what I was. So… I left. And he made it clear that I wasn’t to come back.” The stark whiteness of the inner world was making his eyes feel hot and blurry. Uryū pressed a palm to his left, then his right, brushing his hand off on his hakama. 

His shoulders slumped. “Grandfather told me once that Ryūken was immensely talented. I don’t think he meant me to, but… I started to wonder if I wasn’t standing in my father’s shadow. To know that he was _that_ good and gave it up anyway… I couldn’t understand it. I still can’t.”

Still no sign of a spirit, and Uryū wasn’t sure he had it in him to keep speaking. Ryūken was a sore subject, but inevitably, talking about him led to a minefield of even more difficult topics. He didn't doubt he’d have to get into all of it eventually, but there was only so much he could lay out there in one day, even if it did feel more like talking to himself than anything. 

He waited in deafening silence for what felt like interminable minutes, but there was nothing.

Frustrated with the lack, Uryū turned to Lucia, intending to bid her farewell as was his custom, and froze. His muscles locked up, and he kept his eyes fixed on the exact spot, almost sure he was imagining it. 

Lucia had a shadow.

She’d never had a shadow. Nothing in here had ever had a shadow. Not even him. The light everything was bathed in was too bright for that. But all the same, he could see it, just there, cast barely in front of her. Smaller than it would have been under any natural illumination, but noticeable. It moved in time with her breathing, shifting subtly. 

“I see you,” Uryū said, not really sure what else he _should_ say in a situation like this. 

Apparently, it had been the right thing, because the shadow moved, independently of Lucia this time, darkening and pooling outwards from where she slept, until it had completely separated from her and lay in a circle on the ground.

Slowly, it rose, forming into what looked like a half-solid shape. Its features were hard to distinguish, but it appeared to be of a height with Uryū himself, and similarly-built, made entirely of the shadow-stuff. The one exception was its eyes, which were luminous, the sclera black but the irises kingfisher blue. The shape of everything below the head suggested a cloak, one that bled into the inky pool at its feet. 

It did not speak, and Uryū rose to stand in front of it, brows heavy over his eyes. “Are you the spirit of my zanpakutō?”

It nodded once. 

“Can you speak?”

Another nod, this one slower, more tentative. 

Uryū waited a full ten seconds. “Will you?”

“…bright.” The voice was hoarse, more akin to a soft rasp than words conventionally spoken; little more than breath given vague shape.

Uryū blinked. He supposed that might not sit well with something apparently composed of shadow. “It’s always been like this,” he replied. “I can’t do anything about that.”

“You… can.”

If he could, then wouldn’t it have already happened? How many times had he strained his eyes in here, wishing it were a little dimmer? “How?”

The spirit cocked its head sideways. “…Try.”

He hesitated, glancing down at Lucia. The light was almost certainly connected to her somehow. She and it had been the only things in this world when he first entered it. He didn’t know what effect changing it would have on her. “Do I have to?”

The shadow did not respond. 

Frowning, Uryū considered his options. Clearly, the spirit wanted him to dim the light. It stood to reason that if he didn’t work with it at least a little, he’d make no progress towards releasing it. But Lucia was already dormant—he couldn’t risk harming her further. This was his inner world—it was in some way reflective of, or connected to, his soul. Changing things here might mean really, concretely changing who he was. 

But… maybe the reason he _could_ change things here was that he’d already changed. He knew he had, in some ways. As long as he held onto some things, he thought he could alter others safely enough. But how to reflect that here…

Stepping away from Lucia, he beckoned the shadow to follow. Once he was confident she was actually far away, he turned to face the blankness ahead. “I want shadows to exist here,” he said, unsure how to achieve it. 

But the words themselves—or perhaps the intent behind them—were enough. The light level lowered by several steps in front of him but not behind, creating the first visual feature of his internal world, a perfectly-straight line dividing the white from what was now a mid-toned grey, complete with contour and variation. Where the white seemed endless but also completely flat, like it went nowhere at all, this section had shaped itself into a corridor. He couldn’t see the end of it; that faded into a deeper darkness that permitted no vision beyond. 

The spirit drifted across the line, immediately straightening and resolving shape considerably, until he was confident that he was looking at something with human dimensions. 

“Thank you,” it said—its voice was stronger now, mid-tone masculine, but still quiet. It stared at him with its bright eyes for a disconcerting period of time.

Uryū shifted, not wanting to break eye contact first. He thought he saw it smile halfway, but before he could ask its name, he found himself ejected from his inner world as suddenly as he’d entered it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I guess it was an Ishida-only chapter this time, but Karin and Yuzu will both be back next time. Also, more new characters show up, and shenanigans ensue.


	6. February

Yuzu panted, her hands on her knees, bent half-over and trying to catch her breath. She wasn’t sure if this new exercise was better or worse than running around the track for the entire class period, but it was _different_. 

That morning, Yanagi-sensei had pointed at Sugitani and Tojo, and told them that they were now captains of the Red Division and the Blue Division, and they had to pick the rest of their squads one after the other, in alternating turns. Predictably enough, Karin had been chosen first, followed quickly by Nishimura, Uryū, Fujita, and Abe. Moribito was next, leaving Yuzu and Matsuda for last, and it was Sugitani’s turn to pick. 

Yuzu had known she was still the slowest person in the class. She wasn’t as far behind as she used to be, but it was nevertheless a simple fact. Matsuda could beat her in a footrace, and so Matsuda would be picked next. 

“Kurosaki.”

She blinked, raising a finger and pointing at her own chest, baffled. Someone on Tojo’s team scoffed, and she honestly didn’t blame them. 

But Sugitani only nodded once, a confirmation. So she, still puzzled, padded her way over. At least she was on the team with Uryū and Karin this way. Several blue sashes were passed down the line, and they each tied one around their waist, loosely enough that they could be tugged away, but tightly enough that they wouldn’t drop on their own. 

“Very good,” said Yanagi-sensei, his mustache twitching as if with a life of its own. He clapped his weathered hands together once. “Today’s class will be a game of tag. It works a little differently from ordinary tag, however. Each of you is wearing a single sash with the color of your team on it. You’ll all be on the field, attempting to remove one another’s sashes.” 

He reached over and tugged sharply on Tojo’s to demonstrate, the slick material coming loose with a brief rustle. “One you’ve acquired someone else’s sash, you must tie it, and any attached to it, to the end of your own, making your total sash longer and easier to grab onto. If you lose your sash, you are permitted to continue pursuing others and trying to take theirs. At the end of the class period, the team with the most sashes between its members is the winner. You may use any tactics you believe necessary to defend or attack, except for your zanpakutō or kidō. Understood?” He peered at the two lines of students, all of whom nodded.

“Very well. Face each other, and do not move until I give the signal.” They lined up, Sugitani’s Blue Division with Karin, Uryū, Abe, and Yuzu against Tojo’s Red Division with Nishimura, Fujita, Moribito and Matsuda. 

Yuzu had the poor luck of ending up across from Nishimura, or else they were intentionally targeting her as the slowest person in the group. He’d nodded courteously at her, but at the moment of Yanagi-sensei’s whistle, he’d darted forward with speed she couldn’t match and seized her sash immediately, escaping the tangle before anyone could do the same to him. 

That left Yuzu bereft of a sash, and taking quick stock of her teammates, she’d found that the early game advantage was definitely Red Division’s. Abe had also lost his, and none of the members of Blue Division had stolen any, by the look of it. 

Now, probably halfway into the class period, things had adjusted a little. Fujita had just lost her double sash to Uryū, if the contorted expression of fury on her face was anything to go by. Nishimura still trailed three total behind him as he moved, keeping away from Karin, if only just. 

Abe and Moribito had gone to the ground, and appeared to be fighting each other more than trying to get at the scarves. Neither of them even had one, since Sugitani had just swept in and liberated Moribito of his. 

Yuzu hadn’t ever gotten hers back, and didn’t feel that she was contributing much to the team. At least Abe was keeping one of the Red Division occupied. In a manner of speaking. 

Fujita pursued Uryū around the field with the single-minded determination of the personally offended. Though he was keeping ahead of her, he now had a triple length of fabric fluttering behind him, making things much more difficult. With Karin locked in a chase too, the free parties on the field were Tojo, Matsuda, herself, and Sugitani, who appeared behind her. 

“Matsuda has no sash, and he’s slow,” Sugitani said. Yuzu straightened, glancing up at him. His eyes narrowed, flitting over the field, and he rubbed a dark hand over the short fuzz of hair atop his head. “We should go for Tojo. I’ll distract him, and you can grab the sash.”

It made tactical sense. Yuzu, without a sash of her own, would suffer less penalty for adding a new one, unlike Sugitani, who already wore one. There was, however, a flaw in the plan.

“I’m slow, too,” she pointed out. 

Sugitani blinked at her. “Focus on what you can do, not what you can’t,” he said mildly. “Now come on.”

He took off at a run. Yuzu followed, surprised to find that he didn’t leave her in the dust immediately. Was he slowing down on purpose, or… was the distance between their abilities smaller than she’d thought?

Sugitani curved in towards Tojo, who was himself angling towards Karin. They were going to intercept him. If that was the case then—Yuzu changed her approach, peeling off from Sugitani’s trajectory and winding around to the other side. She wanted to situate herself in Tojo’s blind spot. 

She wasn’t a threat, and everyone in the class knew it. 

But maybe that was an advantage, of a kind. 

Tojo, surprisingly light on his feet for someone so tall, twisted out of the way of Sugitani’s aggressive, straightforward approach. But their tattooed classmate was fluid, easily recovering from the miss and adjusting, lunging a second time. Tojo had to throw himself to the ground to avoid losing his sash, but he was back on his feet almost immediately. 

Yuzu, seeing Matsuda approaching the pair, knew she had to be quick. But it was just as important that she be subtle. Using Tojo’s size to block her from Matsuda’s line of sight and prevent him from catching on too quickly, she rose onto her toes and moved in softly, catching Sugitani’s eye from around Tojo’s frame. She nodded. Sugitani threw himself forward abruptly, catching Tojo unprepared for the shift in momentum and hooking a foot behind his ankle. 

Tojo went down, and in the spare seconds between that and his recovery, Yuzu slipped in, grasping his sash and yanking. It came away in her hand, and then she was off. Matsuda pursued, but Sugitani kept the faster Tojo tied up. 

Looping the sash around her waist was difficult at full speed, but Yuzu managed, curving around towards Karin. Her sister looked to have Nishimura on the ropes, but Moribito, free of Abe’s hold, was moving in as well, while Abe went to assist Uryū. 

“Karin, look out!”

It happened very suddenly. One moment, Karin was going for Nishimura’s sashes again, while Moribito lunged for hers in turn. It didn’t look like she’d be able to get away from him. 

Then, with almost no warning at all, she was ten feet away, her hands empty but her sashes intact. Her face had contorted into pure confusion; she seemed puzzled by her sudden change of position. 

Yanagi-sensei whistled for a stop, gesturing the whole class in with a wave of his arm. They all gathered—in various states of windedness—into a rough circle. 

“Congratulations, Kurosaki-kun,” said Yanagi, his smile large under his facial hair. “You just took your first _shunpō_ step. And congratulations to the Blue Division, winners of today’s game.” 

Karin, still looking a bit dazed, blinked slowly. A smile curled the edges of her mouth—and Yuzu found a matching one spreading over her own. They’d won. And not only that, either. 

Karin had done it—she’d achieved _shunpō_!

* * *

“I did a _shunpō_ step today.”

The spirit blinked at her, ducking its head in acknowledgement. “I know.”

Karin sat crosslegged, gripping her ankles in her hands, knees jittering up and down. “It was… really confusing, actually. I think it’s going to take some time to get used to the way the world blurs.” She rocked slightly on the springy ground, but did not attempt to move from her seat. 

“The benefit of going slowly is that you see more, but I think you’ll get used to staying aware, even when running with your reiatsu.” The bird settled down in front of her, lowering itself so that its narrow legs were tucked underneath it completely. 

“Yeah, probably.” Karin wasn’t too worried about it. All she had to do was practice more, and she’d get used to it. That was hard work, but if she just knuckled down and pushed through it, she’d be completely fine. She always was. 

Her face dropped into a frown. “I’m kinda worried about Yuzu, though. I know I’ll pass all my classes okay, but she really might fail zanjutsu.” It had reached the point where Karin was improving more quickly at hakuda than Yuzu was at zanjutsu—and even though Renji was surprisingly patient for a guy that looked like a delinquent, Karin knew he couldn’t pass Yuzu in the class if she didn’t improve dramatically before the end of the year.

“I wish I knew what to do.”

“Why do you think you have to do anything?” 

Karin glowered. “What do you mean _why_? She’s my sister! If there’s something wrong, of course I’m going to try and help.” 

The bird shifted, some of its feathers fluffing, but it gave no other external sign of agitation. If that was what it felt in the first place. Karin wasn’t exactly an expert in bird body language. 

“Yes, that’s respectable. You should want to help. What I asked is why you believe you have to _do_ something.”

“What? You just said—”

It made a sharp sound, an oddly-musical trill from the back of its throat that trailed off into a whistle. “Stop. Think. Then speak.”

Scowling, Karin obeyed. Furrowing her brows, she moved her arms up to cross them over her chest. “You think that the way to help Yuzu in this case is not to do anything. That doesn’t make sense.”

“Why not?” There was a challenge in the question. 

Karin bit her tongue before the knee-jerk reply could form. Because standing there and watching someone suffer wasn’t something she should do. Could do. Especially not Yuzu. “Because I… because she’s my sister, and I have to support her. Just like she supports me. That’s what family is for.”

The spirit’s red down smoothed a little, and it nodded at her. “That is not wrong to feel. But: what form should that support take?” 

Karin’s eyes fell; she studied the flat ground in front of her with a grimace. “I don’t know. Usually, if she’d have a problem or something, I’d… I don’t know. Try to help her push through it.” 

“Is that how she supports you?”

“Not… exactly. Yuzu isn’t that… aggressive. She’s the kind of person who would just try to arrange things without me knowing it so that I do better.” Unbidden, Karin remembered warm food on bad days, the smell of fresh soap, and the occasional quiet word of encouragement. 

The bird tilted its head. “So support can have different forms at different times.”

She nodded. “Yeah. But… I don’t know how to do those other kinds of things. All I… all I can really do is try and knock down a problem, you know? I don’t know how to look for the other ways around or over. Does that make sense?” She wasn’t _great_ with metaphors, but she thought it was the right basic idea. 

“It does.”

Karin sighed, propping her elbows on her knees and leaning forward to catch her head in her hands. “What you said the other day… about why I want so bad to be the best. It’s not… it’s not about being the best—I was telling the truth about that.”

“But not the whole truth.”

“No.” She shifted her eyes up to meet the spirit’s. “It’s just… I take things as challenges because… if I make something an obstacle for myself, I know how to deal with it. If something’s standing in my way, I tear it down. And if I can’t, I keep trying until I do. I train more, or get stronger, or whatever. I know what that takes. I understand it—it makes sense to me.”

“Yet some problems are not that kind of obstacle.”

Karin swallowed. “Yeah. But I try to make them that way anyway. Because if it’s close enough, then… then I can keep going.” 

The spirit blinked, cocking its head. “To where?”

“Just… just forward, I guess. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?”

The bird said nothing, only laying its head on her knee in silence. Karin felt no desire to keep talking, either. So instead, she took one hand from her chin and used it to smooth over the crest of feathers at the spirit’s crown.

* * *

The Fourth District of the Rukongai was still quite nice, as far as living arrangements went, but it didn’t have quite the same enforced gentility about it as the First District did. This was probably what drew some of the less-fastidious—or less-well-paid—shinigami officers to it. 

Uryū walked alongside Karin and Yuzu, trailing Rukia and Renji, who were obviously both long-familiar with the area. Though he’d been less than certain that he really wanted to join them and their friends for a night out, Rukia had extended the invitation to the other two as well, apparently at the insistence of whoever Matsumoto-fukutaichō was. 

The drinking group was mostly composed of vice-captains, plus Rukia, though apparently Kyōraku-taichō was known to make the occasional appearance. Presumably, his usual haunts were elsewhere. The fact that such high-level officers would be involved had Uryū on his guard somewhat; but, he supposed that if they were friends with Renji and Rukia, they were not likely to be the sorts to worry too much about his own status, whatever it was to them. 

The streetlights were all on; night had fallen about an hour ago, and the establishments that did most of their business at this time were beginning to waken. People passed by on their way home from day jobs or their way to evening engagements, crowding the streets much more than usual. Uryū was unaccustomed to the press of bodies after so much time with plenty of room, and he made sure to keep the two shinigami ahead in sight. 

Eventually, they turned a corner, coming upon a more relaxed street off the main thoroughfare. It was lined by buildings that all seemed to be some form of bar, gambling house, restaurant, or similar location. Paper lanterns dangled from most of the overhangs or awnings, shifting slightly in the mild breeze. The scent of hot fish and sake was strong, but not especially cloying.

“You’re lucky,” Renji said, almost as if aware of Uryū’s thoughts. “When we were recruits, we had to go a lot more districts down to find a place. Ended up in some pretty shady places.” 

Uryū pushed his glasses up his nose, but declined to point out that he probably wouldn’t have agreed to this if he’d been expecting to end up anywhere ‘shady.’

The building they were after had orange lanterns, the sign in the front window cheerfully proclaiming it to be called _Sasagin_. Heading inside, the five of them were quickly bathed in warmth, the result of several old fashioned kotatsu functioning at once. Rukia led them through the front part of the room to the larger back half, further from the bar but boasting several larger sitting areas—one of which was already occupied. 

Sitting on the wall side of a long, low table were two men and a woman, already into their first bottle, if the various paraphernalia scattered about were anything to go by. 

When Rukia called out to get their attention, they stood, moving out from behind the table. The men were nearly night-and-day opposites in appearance: one had short, spiky dark hair and a blue stripe over one cheekbone, with a tattoo of the number ‘69’ resting just below it. The other, if Uryū had to hazard a guess, was of noble stock, blond and slightly doleful in aspect. 

“Ah, so this must be them!” 

But really, the woman made the most obvious impression. 

She was much taller than Rukia, Yuzu, or Karin, and walked with obvious self-assurance. Tossing a handful of blonde hair over her shoulder, she leaned forward slightly too far to peer into Karin’s face. Uryū averted his eyes purposefully—the way she wore her shihakushō was rather… bold. And probably not entirely without risk of more serious exposure. 

“Uh… yeah? Who’re you?” Karin didn’t lean back to create distance, but she did cross her arms. 

The woman smiled, or he thought he heard one in her tone, anyway. “Rangiku Matsumoto. You can just call me Rangiku. This is Izuru Kira and Shūhei Hisagi. But don’t worry if you forget their names; they aren’t as much fun as I am.”

The blond man sighed, and the other one rolled his eyes. 

“I’m Karin Kurosaki, and this is my sister Yuzu. That’s our friend Uryū Ishida.” She jerked her chin in his direction. 

Very carefully, Uryū made eye contact with Matsumoto, inclining his head slightly. 

She regarded him with a smile that wouldn’t have been entirely out of place on Yoruichi’s face. Inwardly, he grimaced. That was never a good sign. 

“I don’t think there’s anyone left in Soul Society who doesn’t know _that_ name,” she said. “Nice to have a real face to put to it though.” Matsumoto waved a hand, as if to forestall anything further on the topic for the moment. “But! We can talk more once we’ve all got some sake. Come on, sit down!”

Uryū went to sit between Karin and Yuzu, but paused when Matsumoto clucked her tongue. 

“Uh-uh. No keeping the adorable new people together.” She hit Hisagi lightly on the shoulder. “Get up and go sit next to Karin-chan. Yuzu-chan, you come here.” She made a beckoning gesture.

Yuzu, likely not recognizing the inherent danger, moved without protest. Karin frowned at Hisagi for all of five seconds before she shrugged and passed him the sake jug that was going around. 

Uryū wound up between Kira and Rukia, which could have been much worse. He elected not to complain—the way the rest of these people were moving around to suit Matsumoto’s whims suggested to him that he ought not. 

“Sorry about all this,” Kira said with a mild smile. “Rangiku hasn’t stopped talking about wanting to meet the three of you since she learned you were at Shin’ō.” He passed a jug of sake over.

Uryū poured himself a shallow glass before setting it down next to Rukia. “It’s… fine,” he replied. 

“We never met, last time you were here,” the other man continued. Something melancholy touched the edges of the words, just a light brush. “It was… a tumultuous time, for more than one reason.” 

Uryū pursed his lips. “I admit I don’t know all the details. At the time I was only aware of what I was doing, and then, towards the end, what Aizen did.”

“Mm.” Kira turned his wrist, coating the sides of his dish in a fine layer of sake before he brought it to his mouth, tipping his head back and swallowing it all at once. 

Wordlessly, Renji handed the jug back across the table to him. He poured another. 

“My captain was one of those that defected. And one of my best friends was Aizen’s vice-captain. He nearly murdered her.” He leaned back against the barrier separating them from the next table over. “This group… in a way, we’re the people who were hit most personally by everything that happened. So in some sense, I think it’s we who owe you the most, for what you did.”

Uryū’s brows furrowed; he sipped carefully at his sake, finding it to be pleasantly plum-flavored. “I don’t understand.” 

Kira tilted his head, studying him for a moment. “You don’t have to. And besides, you probably will, after you join a division and get a sense for what it’s like.” 

Except that Uryū had no plans to join any division. Urahara had said there was a way out; it only made sense to take it when the time came. In Karakura Town, he’d be freer to move as he liked, to take what actions he and his friends decided were best at the time. Unrestricted by a captain’s judgement, or that of the Sōtaichō or whatever new group was now the Central 46.

“If you say so,” he said, swallowing the rest of his drink and the bitter flavor of deception at the same time.

* * *

“So what do _you_ do?” Karin asked, figuring that if she was sitting next to the guy, she might as well talk to him. He didn’t seem like a tightwad or anything, which was nice. He also wasn’t all up in her face like Matsumoto, which ticked two boxes in the ‘all right’ column. 

Hisagi poured them both another drink, though he gave her considerably less than himself. Karin frowned, but wasn’t sure he noticed. 

“I’m the fukutaichō of the Ninth Division, and Editor-in-Chief of the _Seireitei Bulletin_.” 

Karin’s eyebrows inched up. The Ninth was one of the divisions with a traitor for a captain, which meant Hisagi was probably running it himself. “I saw that issue you did on the invasion. It was pretty good, but I don’t think you should have given my old man so many pages. Couldn’t fit his ego through the door for a month, at least.” She mumbled the last part into the rim of her cup, then tipped it back. 

She hadn’t exactly been to a bar before, but her dad hadn’t religiously kept all alcohol from her, either, being pretty fond of it himself. She’d tried it once or twice, but never in a setting like this. 

Hisagi looked confused. “Your father was one of the ryoka?”

Her mouth pulled to the side, and she leveled a blank stare at him. “Uh… yeah. Isshin Kurosaki?” She pointed at herself. “Karin Kurosaki.”

He blinked. “Well… that explains why Rangiku wanted to meet you so bad.”

She followed his eyes—Matsumoto had Yuzu’s hands clasped in her own, her face far too close, and was rambling giddily about something. “I don’t get it.” 

Hisagi raked his hands through his hair, tugging at the ends. “Your dad. He used to be captain of the Tenth. That’s Rangiku’s division. She was his fukutaichō for about a decade.”

“No shit?” Karin’s eyes rounded. She’d known her dad used to be a shinigami—he’d had to explain that much to them to get them into Soul Society and all that. She’d also suspected he was a captain, because his shihakushō had a fancy white bit that might have been a haori once. But she’d never known any more than that; he didn’t talk about it and she didn’t ask. 

“No shit,” Hisagi confirmed.

* * *

“But Yuuuu-zuuuu,” Matsumoto drawled. “We were having so much fuuun…” 

Yuzu suppressed a smile. “I think you might have had a little too much fun, Matsumoto-fukutaichō.” She staggered sideways slightly, trying to support the other woman’s weight. It wasn’t an issue of pounds so much as one of spatial dimensions—Matsumoto was easily eight or nine inches taller than she was. 

“Thanks for helping out with this,” Rukia said, shaking her head. “They aren’t usually this bad, but…”

“Sometimes remembering can be hard,” Yuzu finished. “It’s okay. I’m glad to help.” 

Hisagi and Kira were leaning on each other, neither especially sober but not particularly in need of assistance. Renji had lost the drinking contest with Matsumoto, or at least Yuzu was pretty sure he had, because she was still conscious and he was not. Rukia had tried carrying him first, but in the end, it had proven more expedient just to sling him over Uryū’s shoulder, for much the same reason as Yuzu struggled to support the stumbling vice-captain of the Tenth. 

“Here.” Karin moved in on the other side, and between them, they managed to keep her more or less steady.

“Guess you’re all getting your first look at the divisional barracks,” Rukia said lightly, then glanced at Uryū. “Or second, maybe.”

That part was actually a little bit exciting. Shin’ō students weren’t normally allowed so far into the Seireitei, but accompanied by an actual shinigami like Rukia, it was permitted. The group’s progress wasn’t exactly fast, given their burdens, but they managed. 

When Renji started snoring, Yuzu giggled. Matsumoto looked over at him long enough to figure out what was going on, then laughed outright.

“He’s such a lightweight,” Rukia said, shaking her head. Her smile was fond, though. 

They made it to a crossroad, where Hisagi and Kira broke off from the group, the more-sober Hisagi promising to get Kira back to the Third before returning to the Ninth. Yuzu waved goodbye with the arm that wasn’t around Matsumoto’s back, and they returned it before taking their leave. 

“Good grief. You could stand to drink a little less,” Karin complained, shifting her hold on Matsumoto.

The latter grinned. “You’re just like Isshin. Only he’s as bad as me, so maybe not.”

Karin scowled, but Matsumoto was still talking. She turned her head to look right down at Yuzu. “But you… are you like your mother, Yuzu-chan? What is she like?”

For several seconds, there was nothing but silence. Then Karin clicked her tongue against her teeth, and Matsumoto’s expression seemed to clear slightly. Her lips turned down into a frown, her large eyes growing wider.

“Sorry. I have a big mouth. You don’t have to answer that, Yuzu-chan.”

Yuzu bit her lip. “No, it’s okay. Um… from what I remember, mom was a strong person. Fierce. But also very kind, to the people she loved. And she always told us… to remember to take care of ourselves, that it was okay to be different from other people.”

Matsumoto hummed softly, as if considering it. Anything she might have said tapered off before she actually managed to, her humming transforming into a soft tune instead. That was probably better—Yuzu couldn’t say for sure if she would remember this in the morning anyway. There were drunk patients in her dad’s clinic sometimes, but the repercussions varied widely from person to person. 

They reached the Tenth first, approaching the barracks just as the door opened and a figure stepped out, wearing a white haori and carrying a zanpakutō slung across his back. Yuzu was surprised by how young he looked—maybe her own age, and he wasn’t much taller than herself or Karin. He had a shock of fluffy-looking white hair, though, easily visible in the dark. 

He took one look at Matsumoto between them and frowned. 

Matsumoto herself grinned though. “Taiii-chō,” she singsonged.

“Hitsugaya-taichō.” That was Rukia. “Is Matsumoto’s room open?”

The captain crossed his arms, nodding. “You didn’t have to bring her back.”

Rukia smiled knowingly. “Saved you the trouble, didn’t it?”

His frown deepened, and his focus seemed to shift from Matsumoto to the rest of them. He blinked sharply when his eyes landed on Karin, pale brows knitting together. He gave no indication as to why. “You can bring her in.”

He turned, opening the door behind him back up, and between the three of them, with the fukutaichō’s own very limited assistance, they managed to navigate her to her quarters. Yuzu turned her on her side while Karin stood up.

“Can you get her some water or something?” she asked the captain, who still looked vaguely perturbed by her presence specifically. 

It took him a moment to respond. “…sure. You can go now; I’ll make sure someone checks on her.”

He left the room without so much as a casual thank you, and Karin scowled at his back. 

“What a jerk. She’s his fukutaichō. The least he could do would be look in on her himself.”

Yuzu smiled wanly. “Well, as long as she’s taken care of, right? We should go, Karin.”

Her sister nodded and rubbed a hand down her face. “Now we just have to get the monkey back to the Sixth.”

* * *

Uryū caught Yuzu’s practice blade easily on his own, shifting the angle to slide them apart, though he could have simply out-muscled her. This maneuver had the benefit of throwing off her balance, and he stepped in, delivering a smart rap across her back when she stumbled forward, knocking her to the mat.

She groaned softly, pushing herself to her feet again, resetting her stance, and shifting her grip on the wooden tantō in her hand.

On paper, she was doing everything the right way—until they actually started. Her stance was solid, her hold was right. She’d even clearly thought through the ways to compensate for the fact that her blade was shorter than his. But her strikes were slow, and when they hit they were weak. 

He wasn’t sure what to suggest. She knew this was her problem, and yet it seemed that any attempted improvement lasted for at most a short exchange before evaporating. 

“Let’s take a break, and see how Karin’s doing on her kidō,” he said, and she nodded gratefully. 

They placed their practice blades at the side of the mat and moved to the other end. Uryū crossed his arms as Karin braced herself for a Byakurai, incanting the spell and aiming the blue lightning for a target downfield. 

The bolt flew mostly straight, hitting slightly up and to the left of center, but it did tear a chunk out of the wood, and he hid a smile by ducking his head. There was still a ways to go, but all three of them were really benefiting from the practice. 

“Sugitani-san?” Yuzu’s voice drew his attention. 

Uryū straightened his expression and turned. Sugitani had indeed approached—though he normally gave them a wide berth and did his own training, it would appear he had something to say. 

With three pairs of eyes on him, he bowed his head, a fraction stiffly. “I don’t mean to intrude,” he said, letting his wrist rest casually on the hilt of his zanpakutō, “but it occurs to me that your training might be slightly easier with an even number. If you don’t mind.”

That was unexpected. Sugitani was mostly a loner; he spoke to Abe if he spoke to anyone at all. But at the same time, he stayed well away from the hostility Moribito and Fujita demonstrated, and he didn’t have the same sense of formality about him as Nishimura did. 

Uryū glanced down at the others. Karin shrugged, and Yuzu nodded after a moment. 

“I guess there’s no reason why not,” he replied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Kotatsu_ – 炬燵 – “Torch foot warmer.” This is a low, wooden table frame covered by a  _futon_ , or heavy blanket, upon which a table top sits. The old-fashioned kind, like Uryū notices in this chapter, actually involve a charcoal brazier under the table. Modern ones use electric heat, sometimes built into the table itself.
> 
> * * *
> 
> So yeah, both Rangiku and Tōshirō have unresolved issues involving that incident where their captain went to the living world one time and never came back. Hisagi didn’t recognize the connection right away because it isn’t widely known, especially since Isshin was known to everyone in Soul Society as Isshin _Shiba_. So the fact that some academy student had the same last name as his fake last name wouldn’t have immediately rung a bell. But of course Rangiku knew him better, and Karin does bear a pretty decent physical resemblance to him.


	7. March

It was easy to see why Sugitani was one of the best in their class at zanjutsu. He moved like he was born with a sword in his hands, and the more Yuzu thought about it, the more she noticed how it bled into the rest of his life, too. Karin walked confidently, Uryū with clear restraint; Sugitani moved like he was stalking something, always halfway to his toes already, as if at any moment he might have to fight. 

He was, in that respect, completely the opposite of her. 

They sat across from each other on the mat, wooden swords over their laps, while Uryū and Karin practiced hakuda not far away. She’d initially been wary of this—the idea of spending yet more time trying to improve her worst skill in front of someone who was so good at it didn’t sit too well with Yuzu. 

But so far, they hadn’t even sparred. 

“You aren’t used to fighting.” It wasn’t a question, but in saying it, he seemed to be inviting her to elaborate. 

She shook her head. “I’d never even held a sword until I came here. I guess I still probably haven’t, since it’s a tantō.” They all practiced with blades the same length as their sealed zanpakutō, which made sense. The forms for the different types weren’t identical, but Renji knew them all, and taught the differences as part of his demonstrations. 

Sugitani tapped his thumb on the side of his bokken. “I used to be afraid of them too,” he said.

She didn’t deny that fear was what she felt. How could she?

“Draw your zanpakutō.” He stood, gesturing with his right hand for her to do the same. 

She hesitated, but rose to her feet. “I can’t use it,” she protested, “it’s against the rules.” Well, that and she didn’t feel anywhere near comfortable doing so. She could cut him, or more likely, herself. 

“I won’t ask you to. Just draw it.”

Carefully, Yuzu laid a hand on her zanpakutō’s hilt, wrapping her fingers around it and slowly sliding the short blade from its dark purple sheath. The soft rasp was a foreign sound to her, and equally uncanny was the way the field lights glinted off the edge of it. She held it slightly away from her body, grimacing. 

“It feels uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Too heavy for what it’s made of. Like you’re holding death in your hands.”

Yuzu swallowed, nodding slowly.

“Wrong.” 

She looked up sharply, to see that Sugitani had crossed his arms over his chest. He met her eyes steadily, and it wasn’t the first time he’d reminded her of some kind of predator species. Maybe a jackal? A wolf?

“You have always held death in your hands. Everyone does. Every time you light a kidō, every time you strike with your palms or your fists or your feet. There is no escaping it. You’ve had death in your hands since you were strong enough to grip a throat, or break a bone, or push someone over at the wrong angle. You hold it every time you wield a kitchen knife or a pen or a hairpin.”

Yuzu’s lips parted. “But…”

“But nothing,” he replied. “You know a thousand ways to kill someone, some of them much more dangerous or efficient than that little blade. And how many people have you killed by accident so far?”

“N-none.” But that wasn’t the problem!

He shook his head, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “It is too late to think this is a power you should not have. You already have it. But if what you want is to be merciful, then you need to become so strong that you don’t _have_ to kill your opponents, because you can defeat them without deadly force. That is more difficult than killing. It will take much more training, much more practice, and much more _skill_. Skill that you are afraid to learn, because you feel death in your hands and think it is strange.”

Yuzu thought she could see the sense in that, but she wasn’t sure it solved her immediate problem. 

Sugitani’s shoulders relaxed. “You should carry her around for a while,” he suggested, much less firmly. “The more like a part of you she feels, the easier it will be to wield her when the moment comes. She won’t let you cut yourself.”

“How did you know she’s a she?” 

He shrugged. “Most of the time, the sword spirit is whatever the wielder is.”

Yuzu considered him for a moment, trying to relax the hand with her zanpakutō in it. “You seem to know an awful lot about zanjutsu, Sugitani-san. And zanpakutō.”

His lip quirked. “And as I hear it, you know a lot about medicine. We all have our histories, Kurosaki-ōjo.”

The form of address was starkly different from the one he’d used in the past, and she didn’t understand the reason for it. It wasn’t even actually _accurate_. “You… don’t have to call me that.”

“But I should.” 

Before she could ask him what _that_ was supposed to mean, Karin shouted for her. Yuzu realized that it was probably about time to head to the dormitories. Turning back to Sugitani, she found that he was already leaving, and swallowed the question. He’d given her a lot to think about, really—maybe that was enough for now.

* * *

“How do you feel about what he said?”

They both sat under the engawa this time, the steady, gentle patter of the rain on the overhanging roof a constant backdrop to the conversation. Yuzu had no idea where the spirit had conjured the tea from, but oddly it felt exactly like drinking real tea. The smell and taste were the same, even the temperature and texture over her tongue. 

Yuzu set her dainty little cup down with a clink onto the low table between them. “He’s right in a sense. And I think I always knew what he was telling me, but… it’s not just about the literal truth of things.” It wasn’t _just_ that she could use a sword to hurt someone, though that was part of it. 

“It’s not something that _could_ hurt somebody, like a kitchen knife or my hands. It’s something that was _made_ to hurt people. That’s what it’s for. The only thing. And I… I don’t know if I can do that.”

The spirit regarded her mutely for some time, slowly sipping at the tea in her cup. She wore the same kimono as before, but the flower arrangement in her hair was different today, composed of what looked like orange azaleas from the garden. It shouldn’t have matched, but it somehow looked harmonious anyway. 

“What do you want to do?”

Yuzu considered it. “What do you mean? About zanjutsu?”

The spirit shook her head, the flowers trembling slightly with the motion. “In life. What do you want to do? To become?”

A silence fell, broken only by the rain, and Yuzu watched the steam rise in languid coils from her teacup. Her fingers found the end of her braid, resting against her collarbone. She chewed her lip. “I want…” 

She sighed through her nose, casting her eyes out over the garden. They were drawn to the desiccated tree in the center like iron to a lodestone. A familiar grief welled in her chest, pressing up against her throat until she wondered if it would choke her. “I want to protect them. The people I love. I want… I want to make it so they don’t suffer anymore.”

The spirit placed her own cup down as well, reaching for the teapot and pouring more in an elegant motion. “Everyone suffers, Yuzu. It is a part of life. That which does not suffer, does not grow, and that which does not grow, withers. There is no such thing as perfect stasis.”

“Then I want to help them as much as I can.”

“That is not a bad goal to have,” the woman replied, blowing gently over the rim of her teacup. “But I asked you what _you_ wished to become. Speaking relative to other people can only be half an answer, at best.”

Relative to other people? Yes, Yuzu supposed that was fair enough. She was so used to thinking in those terms. “I’m… I’m not sure I know,” she said at last. “It’s not like I’ve ever had to be alone. Dad and Karin have always been there, even after what happened to mom and Ichigo. I’m not sure I want to know who I’d be without them.”

“Of course not,” the spirit said gently. “But surely you would agree that there is an obvious distinction between loving other people and allowing yourself to be defined by them. You are Isshin and Masaki’s daughter and Karin and Ichigo’s sister. That much I knew from the very moment you woke me. But what I need to know now is who _Yuzu_ is, and who she desires to become. I cannot lend you my power without knowing how it will be used, do you understand?”

Yuzu lifted her legs to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and setting her chin in the indent between her knees. “I do. I just… don’t have an answer yet.”

“Well… think about it. That is my requirement. And when you think you have the answers to my questions, we will speak again.”

* * *

“Kurosaki, Moribito.” Fēng sounded almost bored when she read out the sparring assignments.

Karin, on the other hand, was itching to go. She felt like she’d made some serious breakthroughs in her training in the last couple of weeks. She just needed to remember all of it when she got on the mat. 

Her tabi-clad toes curled slightly into the padded surface beneath her. On the other side, Moribito was rolling his shoulders, cracking his neck to either side with a series of dull clicks. Confidence practically oozed out of him, like some kind of slimy fungus. She couldn’t stand it, or him. 

It was more than the fact that he beat her every time. More even than the fact that she’d given him, and this, the status of ‘obstacle’ in her mind. It was the little things she noticed but couldn’t call out because of their subtlety. The way he turned his nose up, just a bit, at herself and any of the students who weren’t noble like he was. The way he scoffed in history class whenever anyone asked a question he knew the answer to already. Like everyone should have had the same education as him, even though plenty of them had never been given the chance. The fact that he’d walked out of Uryū’s room and refused to even bunk in the same hallway as a Quincy. 

She was also pretty pissed at the fact that _someone_ had accommodated his stupid, bigoted request. 

But most of all, she hated the way his superiority was a foregone conclusion to him. This person, who’d never known hunger or hardship or heartbreak, had the _gall_ to believe that people in the outer Rukongai somehow _deserved_ what they’d gotten. 

It was a popular theory among the nobility: that the circumstances under which one entered Soul Society, and the place they were shuffled to, whether they were born as babies here or woke up in adult bodies, all somehow reflected the ‘quality’ of their souls. That the vaunted lifestyle of nobility was their get for being the pure people they were, and the people that woke up in Inuzuri or worse had been and were degenerates. Even, somehow, the children. 

It had been really easy to make him an obstacle after she’d heard him and Fujita talking about that Reikōketsu crap. 

Because if he was an obstacle, Karin got to tear him down.

She pulled in a deep breath, jerking her head to flick her increasingly-long ponytail behind her shoulder. Moribito was quite a bit taller than her, but it was his breadth more than anything that caused her problems. 

No. No, she couldn’t think like that. None of it would be any problem at all if she was doing hakuda right. In fact, his outright aggressiveness would work in her favor. Momentum. She had to do this in terms of momentum. 

“Begin.” Fēng’s voice broke the hush.

Moribito stepped forward almost lazily, swinging a heavy fist for Karin’s side. She’d seen this approach before. What she needed to do was—

Instinct, the result of long hours of practice, took over. Karin registered the oncoming blow, and sidestepped, grasping his wrist as it went by, stepping again and dropping the center of their gravity lower. Moribito’s own momentum locked up his joints; and, in a smooth movement that actually took little strength at all, she flowed around him, putting so much pressure on his elbow that he had to drop to the ground or risk a break. 

He hit the mat with a thud, not near as quick in regaining his feet as he should have been. 

“What’s the matter?” Karin asked, narrowing her eyes. “Not used to falling down?”

Moribito surged to his feet, launching a series of kicks and punches, recognizable from the ‘hard styles’ portion of their previous lessons. Where before Karin had answered with the same, she countered more softly now, using angles and pushes to move his hits out of alignment or quick steps to get around them.

When he overcompensated for one miss, leaving his left side open, she took the opportunity, jabbing the spot with a quick hit and getting away again. She couldn’t let him grab hold of her and force it to a contest of strength. She’d lose.

Her defense wasn’t perfect; he sent her reeling with a thrust to the sternum. She recovered quickly, refusing to rise to the bait and respond with the same kinds of strike. Instead, she moved away, out of his range, circling slowly around. 

“Come on, Moribito. Get it together. I’m just some inferior soul from the Rukongai, right? Shouldn’t a noble like you be able to take me down easy?”

Control of the match was hers, and Karin put a punctuation mark on it the next time he came in. His maneuvers, once as inevitable as the tide, weren’t nearly so difficult to anticipate as they had been six months ago. Karin leaned to the side to avoid the heel of his right hand, ducking in under his guard. She went low, stepping around his arm and driving the side of her foot into the back of his knee. 

It buckled. Karin followed up while the advantage was hers, grabbing his loose left hand and twisting, planting her knee in his back and bearing down while he was unbalanced. He toppled facefirst into the mat, and she pinned him in place.

She caught Uryū smiling at her, and she grinned right back. 

That felt exactly as good as she thought it would.

* * *

Uryū stepped across the line into the shaded part of his inner world, peering about into the gloom. It seemed darker than he recalled it being; though there were no objects here to cast shadows, exactly. It was just a deeper grey overall. 

Once he was far enough in, he glanced down. Sure enough, the entrance of an object—himself—had produced a shadow. The spirit had taken to doing this, though he couldn’t say why. It had to exist somehow when he wasn’t present, which meant it could move about independently. 

It detached from him, forming into the puddle of darkness again before rising, mutating into the full, three-dimensional entity he took to be its true form. It blinked at him, but said nothing. That was normal; usually, he had to initiate any conversation. Even then, it could be a chore. 

“Will you tell me your name?”

It shook its head mutely.

Uryū made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “Why not?”

It bent slightly, adopting a hunched posture, its head drooping slightly. The smoky darkness around the bottom of it billowed little, slight undulations now where often it resembled roiling fog. “I do not know.”

“You… don’t know why you won’t tell me, or you don’t know your name?”

“Yes.”

He dragged a hand down his face, frowning at the spirit. “You aren’t very helpful.”

If anything, it deflated further, shrinking by some inches. Uryū felt a twinge of guilt. If it was truly in ignorance of its name, it wasn’t being obtuse on purpose. Perhaps it was already helping him as much as it could; he had no way to know. He shouldn’t simply assume it was intentionally resisting him. 

“What…” It straightened a bit, tilting back its head to look at him from its new height. “What am I?”

Uryū’s frown deepened, his eyes narrowing behind his glasses. “You are, I _believe_ , the spirit of my zanpakutō.”

It seemed to give this some consideration, tipping its head sideways, the substance at its feet—if it had feet—thickening into a swirl of quasi-fog. It blinked slowly, owlishly. “And what… are you?”

“I’m a—” Uryū stopped himself. That question was, he’d thought, one with an easy and obvious answer. But it pulled up more associations in him now than he’d thought it would. He was a Quincy, obviously. No one here would ever let him forget it, between the cold shoulders and the outright hostility. He didn’t want to forget anyway. 

But… being a Quincy didn’t explain his presence here. Not really. 

“I… don’t have a complete answer for you,” he admitted, pushing his glasses up his nose and shifting his weight. “I’m unsure that there is one.”

“Then… what is she?” The spirit’s eyes shifted until it was looking out beyond the bounds of its half of the world, at the unconscious Lucia. 

Uryū pursed his lips. “That is Lucia. She is… the part of me that is a Quincy, I suppose.”

“Am I part of you, too?”

He tilted his head at it. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I believe that you are.”

* * *

Yuzu’s wooden practice blade clanged off Sugitani’s, and he drove her back a step. Digging her heels in, she angled the tantō, slipping his bokken right off the end and regaining the space she’d lost with a hard step in. This aggression was still foreign to her, but she didn’t have to be _too_ confrontational. She just needed to do what she’d done with hakuda: find the moves that worked best for her, and remember to switch tactics when necessary. 

Sugitani was still a much better swordsman than her, however, and his blade was resting on her clavicle two moves later. Sweat dripped freely from her chin, and ran down her back and sides. She was pulling in deep breaths to compensate for her exertion, but her muscles burned in a way she was slowly learning to enjoy.

“Good,” he said quietly, removing the bokken from her neck with care. “You’re getting the hang of it.”

“Only about half a year later than everyone else,” she said, shaking her head. Her hair was damp, spiked into little clusters, and she stowed her practice blade. Tugging her hair band loose, she re-gathered everything into a tail before tying it off again. She really needed a bath. 

“What everyone else is doing isn’t important,” he replied. “What matters is that every day, you are better than you were the day before.” He raised a dark eyebrow at her. “You already know this.”

She nodded slowly. “I… yes. I did. I do.” That didn’t make it easy to internalize. 

But Sugitani seemed satisfied, taking a long swallow from his canteen and putting the cork back in with a rap from the side of his fist. 

They’d decided to practice in the dojo that afternoon, mostly because they were focusing on kidō tonight, and Yuzu wanted to get more zanjutsu in beforehand. It was different from dragging mats out onto the field—it felt more official, somehow. 

“Sugitani-san?”

“Yes, Kurosaki-ōjo?”

She let her previous question go in favor of a new one. “Will you tell me why you call me that?”

He turned fully to face her, lifting his shoulders and letting them drop again. Absently, he scratched under one of his sleeves, lifting it to expose patches of blue, gold, red and green ink in the process. She thought the image was of some kind of fish or sea reptile, but it was hard to say for sure from her angle. 

“Because it is the truth.”

“But—” her protest was cut off when the door to the dojo slid open. 

“Well well. I’m hardly surprised. Still, Sugitani, I expected slightly better taste on your part.” Fujita, dressed for practice, stepped into the room, followed by Moribito. 

The expression on her face was one of extremely elegant disdain—honestly, if there was an ōjo in the room, it was Fujita, not Yuzu. 

“Fujita.” Sugitani didn’t seem to be nearly as wary as Yuzu was; his tone was, if anything, a bit chill. Like he usually was with anyone who wasn’t Abe. 

She sneered, an oddly-delicate expression for one containing so much malice. “A poor choice, to cast your lot with a _Quincy_ and his…” She paused quite deliberately, eyeing Yuzu. “Housepets.”

Beside her, Yuzu could almost feel him stiffen, but she didn’t wait for anything else. For the first time in more years than she could really remember, Yuzu felt a hot emotion welling up under her skin, twisting her insides and burning like a little ember at the pit of her stomach. 

“You leave him alone,” she said softly, straightening her spine and tilting her chin up to meet Fujita’s eyes. There was no way to even _begin_ to explain how many ways Fujita’s understanding of the situation was wrong, and honestly, Yuzu doubted it would matter if there were. 

“Did I permit you to speak to me, mouse?” 

Yuzu’s jaw tightened. Fujita was glaring at her—but Moribito was frowning, something in his expression almost _guilty_. It hit her in a sudden burst of insight, like dawn breaking over the horizon. It was almost too absurd to be true, and yet watching the interplay of expressions and body language, taking in what she knew to be so from previous interactions with everyone, it was the only answer that fit. 

“You’re afraid.” Her anger subsided as quickly as it had swelled, receding like low tide.

Fujita’s head snapped towards her. “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t fear you.”

Yuzu shook her head. “No—you’re afraid of what you think I represent.”

Fujita scoffed, taking a threatening step forward—but Yuzu knew she would never actually attempt to strike her in anything but a practice match. She cared too much about her reputation, and about making it through Shin’ō. She’d been trying so hard since day one to distinguish herself from everyone else: in kidō, in the history classroom, in everything. 

“Everything is irregular, now. You were brought up a certain way, to expect certain things. You knew since you were young that you would go here, that your birth and training would make you superior to everyone else. But you aren’t, and the harder you try, the more you realize that there are other people who are just as good as you.” 

Fujita was extremely talented, that much was obvious. But she wasn’t infallible, and Rukongai brats and middle-class mice and a _Quincy_ bested her just as often as she bested them, if not more. 

“But nothing’s right, is it?” Yuzu spoke at a gentle volume, clasping her hands in front of her. “This war is looming over everyone, threatening the safety and the stability of everything you lean on. It’s like that for me, too, but… it’s worse for you. Because you know that Quincy are enemies, monsters, and they can’t be shinigami. And other people, the little mice of the world, they can’t be as good as you at anything. They _certainly_ can’t choose to associate with a monster instead of you. And so you’ve made it about an ‘us’ and a ‘them,’ and you can’t understand why anyone would ever choose ‘them’ because they’re part of the problem. You’re afraid this is the first step towards a loss in that looming war, the first step in your whole world crashing down around you.” 

She paused, sighing softly. “I’m right, aren’t I, Fujita-san?”

Sugitani’s eyebrows were creeping towards his hairline. Moribito blinked at her slowly, several times, still frowning mutely. 

Fujita spluttered most inelegantly, taking another half-step forward before abruptly turning on her heel, whirling out of the dojo and slamming the door behind her. Moribito had to open it again to get through, but closed it with more care. 

Yuzu exhaled, slumping slightly. “That was…”

“Well done, I thought.” Sugitani’s eyes seemed to glitter with amusement. 

She huffed a bit, shaking her head. “Nerve-wracking. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say until I was saying it.” Come to think of it, she wasn’t even sure where the words had _come_ from, but they made sense in retrospect, and she didn’t think she was wrong. “Do you think she’ll leave us alone?”

“Hm.” He shrugged. “At least for a while. Sometimes a good tongue-lashing can do what no number of bruises will manage.” 

“It wasn’t… oh, I didn’t mean to lash, exactly, I just…” 

He actually laughed at that. “Kurosaki-ōjo, you didn’t do anything she didn’t have coming to her. Who knows? Maybe she’ll actually think about it.”

* * *

The spirit stood in front of Yuzu, regal and upright. A single lotus flower was tucked into her hair this time. 

Yuzu, from seiza on the ground, tipped her head up to meet the spirit’s eyes. 

“Do you have answers for me?”

Sucking in a deep breath and tightening her hold on her legs where she gripped them, Yuzu nodded. 

“Then tell me: what do you want to do?”

“I want to grow.”

The spirit’s head tilted slightly to the side. “Into what? Who would you wish to be?”

She licked her lips. “Myself. I want to be myself.”

Amusement touched the corner of the spirit’s mouth, tilting it upward, and she clasped her hands together in front of her. “Are you not already yourself?”

“Only the way a seed is a flower. I want to be my whole self. My best self. And I want to know who that is.” She couldn’t see it yet—but she knew she wanted to. 

“Are you certain? There are many ways you might nurture your talents. Would you not prefer to return to your father’s clinic, where you are not in danger of harming others?” The question contained no hostility, but there was a slight edge to it, anyway. 

“Harm comes in lots of forms,” Yuzu said slowly. “And so does help. I want… I want to make this world better for the people who live in it. I won’t deny that. And I want that because I care about those people. But caring about them, wanting the best for them, and protecting them… I don’t have to stop my own growth to do that. I don’t have to stagnate so that other people can flourish instead. I want both.” 

Even saying it sounded like a bit… _much_ , in a way. Too selfish, or too arrogant, to assume that she was capable of such things. But it was the truth—it was what she wanted, even if it had been difficult to understand at first. 

“You will suffer.”

Yuzu nodded. “I know. But I’d suffer even more if I didn’t reach for this. I have to know who I am. I have to know what I can do.” She could not be like Fujita—someone who saw her foundation quaking around her and reacted by lashing out, closing off, trying to redraw the lines where they had been so she didn’t have to move. 

And there was no mistake—the foundation was shaking. No one who knew what was coming could believe otherwise. She could hide from it, or meet it with everything she had.

She’d been uncomfortable since day one here. “I came to Shin’ō because of Karin,” she admitted. “I wanted to be there for her, and I always thought ‘when this is over, I’ll go home.’ But… I don’t want to go back. I want to stay, and to keep growing, for my own sake, as well as to protect others.” She swallowed thickly, and forced herself not to look away from the spirit’s eyes. 

The woman smiled. “Then we will cultivate you together.”

* * *

Yuzu’s eyes snapped open, and she sat up sharply in her bed, breaths coming quick and shallow. Scrambling to throw her covers off, she swung her feet over the edge and set them down on the tatami flooring underneath. 

Her eyes landed on her zanpakutō, and she lurched into a standing position, snatching it off the desk where she’d left it when she went to sleep. Could it really be…?

“Nn… Yuzu? What are you doing?” 

Tearing her eyes from the blade, she met Karin’s bleary stare with frenetic energy. Uryū was stirring, too, reaching for where his glasses lay on the floor underneath his cot. 

“I think… I think I know her name,” she said, disbelief drenching the words. But she made for the door anyway. 

They scrambled to follow, and she heard Uryū trying to pull on his shoes, but Yuzu herself didn’t bother, throwing open the door and sprinting down the hallway without closing it behind her. She launched herself down the stairs, out of the dormitory building, and towards the practice field. Her bare feet thudded over stone pavement, gravel, and then slick grass, but she didn’t draw to a stop until she was in the middle of the outdoor practice area. Most of the lights had long since gone out, but she could see well enough by the natural illumination of the night sky. 

She heard more footsteps approaching from behind, and turned over her shoulder. Karin’s hair was a mess and Uryū wore only one tabi, but they were there. She beamed, but it quickly fell away. 

What if…?

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Karin crossed her arms, scowling. “If you’re gonna drag us out of bed, you have to at least try.”

Yuzu nodded. “Right.”

Turning back around, she carefully drew her zanpakutō. It glinted in the dark like the spirit’s obi, and suddenly it didn’t seem so foreign to her anymore at all. This… this was part of her. And if she kept growing, kept working and striving, it would grow just like she would. 

_We will cultivate you together. My name is…_

“ _Sakisomero, Hasuhime_.”

There was a burst of light from the tantō, accompanied by a gentle chiming sound, a pure, metallic ringing. The shape of it changed under her hands, smoothing out until Yuzu was clutching the middle of a metal pole, one that extended to the ground and then a good foot above her head. The light faded, and she gaped.

Her shikai appeared to be a shakujō, but instead of a wooden pole, it was made entirely from bright silvery metal. The top part was continuous with the haft, rather than being a different material. It had four rings, two on either side of the division in the middle, and they produced more soft chiming when they clinked together. The center line of the circle at the top, usually supported with a vertical bar of some kind, instead held what looked like a partly-open lotus bud, made of the same silver. A spear point protruded from the end, which such staves normally did not have. 

“It’s beautiful,” Uryū remarked quietly. 

“I wonder if it has any abilities,” Karin added. 

Yuzu blinked. “I don’t know.”

“Do you smell that?” Uryū glanced up at the sky above them for some reason. 

“Smell what?”

“It smells like rain. Maybe it’s the zanpakutō?” 

Yuzu sniffed the air. It did smell a little bit like the air before a rain shower, but she wasn’t sure if it was in fact Hasuhime or just the weather. “Maybe we should go back inside?” Part of her really wanted to stay, to start trying to figure out what Hasuhime could do, but it was late, or early maybe, and realistically, they needed to sleep since they had class tomorrow.

She let go of the release, and with another glimmer, Hasuhime reverted to her sealed state. Yuzu slid her carefully back into her sheath, unable to keep the smile from her face. 

“C’mere.” Karin pulled her into a hug as soon as the dagger was safely stowed.

Yuzu laughed, hugging back, leaning slightly to the left when she felt Uryū’s hand ruffling the hair atop her head. 

“Congratulations, Yuzu.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Reikōketsu(meidai)_ – 霊高潔(命題) – “Soul Purity (Thesis/Theory).” So, there doesn’t seem to be a consistent, in-universe explanation for where a soul ends up when it dies. Some are basically just dumped in various locations as adults or kids, but others are born into noble families as babies. In either case, to avoid infinite population inflation, the soul has to correspond to someone who died in the living world. There are a lot of ways this _could_ work, but outside of asking the Soul King directly, which no one can do, there’s no real way to know how it _does_ work. So there are, in this AU, several competing theories for why some people end up born into fantastically-wealthy noble houses and some end up abandoned babies in Inuzuri. One of these theories is the Reikōketsu theory, which basically states that there are varying degrees of “quality” between souls, and good quality souls end up in noble families while bad quality souls end up in the outer Rukongai. This has _implications_ , of course. But some (definitely not all) nobles believe this and teach it to their kids, so… you can understand why the likes of Fujita and Moribito really don’t think much of the other students.
> 
> This isn’t completely made up by me—the idea of the quality of a soul is everywhere, from Plato to Buddhism to Christianity (if you interpret the need for redemption as being because sin makes a soul impure) and beyond. This is one way such a concept might look in a society composed entirely of the souls of the dead. 
> 
> _-ōjo_ – 王女 – Literally, “lord’s daughter.” An honorific of significant distinction. Not to be confused with _ojō_ (お嬢), which means something like “(another person’s) daughter.” Idiomatically, both connote something like “young lady,” but while the latter is common in anime and stuff to refer to any rich, posh girl, the former has a similar meaning to “princess” in the Japanese sense—the daughter of a man of noble station. The former is what Sugitani uses to address Yuzu, which puzzles her.
> 
>  _Hasuhime_ – 蓮姫 – “Lotus Princess,” more or less. This is the name of Yuzu’s zanpakutō, which is a modified shakujō staff with further properties and abilities as yet undetermined. Its release command is _sakisomero_ (咲き初めろ), the imperative form of “to blossom.” 
> 
> _Shakujō_ –錫杖 – “Tin staff.” Anyone familiar with the anime or manga _Inuyasha_ will recognize this as the stave the monk Miroku carries. It’s an item usually used by Buddhist priests/monks. The rings jingle together to alert people and animals nearby of the monk’s presence, as a way to make sure small creatures are not accidentally stepped on by the monk passing by. It can be wielded as a weapon, and is particularly suited for defense, with a good reach. Yuzu’s has a little extra kick for offense as well, since it actually has a spear-point on top, which most of them do not feature.
> 
> * * *
> 
> So… Yuzu got shikai first. This might seem weird, but my reasoning goes something like this: shikai is about self-awareness, and more importantly, the acknowledgement and acceptance of one’s weakness and vulnerability. The zanpakutō spirits are all taking their wielders through a process of self-examination, and prodding at them until they understand and admit their true motives, their flaws, and their vulnerabilities. This isn’t an easy process for anyone, obviously, but Yuzu came into the story much more aware of herself, accepting of her flaws, and willing to acknowledge her weakness than anyone else. This is part of her personality. It makes sense, then, that when that kind of thing is what’s called for, she’d be the first to get it right.
> 
> That’s not all it is, of course—one has to be worthy of shikai in other ways, but I think by this point it’s fairly clear that if it were _only_ a matter of latent talent or raw power, all three of them would have qualified already.


	8. April

Karin was pretty sure Yuzu’s face hadn’t lost the red for the entirety of the evening so far. 

It really didn’t help that their father was telling everyone and anyone who would listen for even half a second that his amazing and wonderful Yuzu-chan had achieved shikai after only seven months at Shin’ō, and that was a new record, didn’t you know? 

Equally painful-slash-hilarious was the fact that Yuzu tried to stop him from talking about it every time. They were out in the third district for dinner, so more than a few of the faces were familiar. Karin knew her twin well enough to know that public scrutiny was a nightmare for Yuzu in more than one way. But… it was pretty much impossible not to get it when the geezer was making such a huge deal out of the whole thing. 

Karin tipped back her celebratory sake, casually plucking another dumpling from the plate in the center of the table with her chopsticks. It wasn’t good manners, but it wasn’t like her family cared. Even Uryū didn’t so much as blink. 

The waitress—an extremely patient woman named Fumiko who often served them here—walked by, and the old man flagged her down and launched back into his 'proud dad' speech. Yuzu tugged at his sleeve in an attempt to get him to stop, but it was completely useless. 

“Does it bother you?” Uryū’s question was quiet, but since he was next to her on her side of the table, he didn’t have to be any louder to make himself heard. 

She shrugged. “I mean, he’s annoying, but it’s probably bothering Yuzu more than me.” She popped the dumpling into her mouth and chewed, leaning forward to pick a few more things off the large plates in the middle. 

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. 

Karin swallowed her mouthful and leaned back again. “I know.” 

The truth was… she wasn’t exactly sure. Swiping her tongue over her teeth, she elaborated. “I’m happy for her. I am. She worked hard, and she deserves it. But…”

“But you’ve worked hard, too.” He refilled both their sake cups and handed hers to her without asking. 

She knocked it back in a swallow, chasing the dumplings with the sharp rice wine. “Yeah. I thought… I dunno what I thought. That one of us would do it first. Yuzu just… she’s different, now, from how she used to be, but kind of not. It’s…” She waved the empty sake dish in no particular direction, trying to articulate something her words couldn’t quite explain. 

“It’s not bad, but it makes you wonder about things.” 

She nodded. “She’s been there all my life, you know. But I’ve always been the one who…” Karin trailed off. 

From the way he nodded, she didn’t have to explain any further than that, anyway. She supposed that was the good thing about having friends.

* * *

“All right, everyone back to the front.” 

Karin lined up between Uryū and Yuzu, Sugitani on her sister’s other side. The polar opposite end of the line had Fujita, Moribito, and then Nishimura on it, and the other three floated in the middle. Karin hadn’t really paid much attention before, but now that she thought about it… pretty much every class looked like that. 

“So today we’re going to start practicing with a new form. It’s not useful for everyone, especially if you have a big shikai, but it can help with sealed swordfighting at least.” Renji rubbed at the back of his neck, fluffing his weird topknot-ponytail thing. 

He swore up and down that the color was natural. Karin wasn’t so sure about that. 

“Anyway,” he continued, glancing down the line. “Anyone here know any iaijutsu?”

Nishimura raised his hand. 

“Oh, good. We can demonstrate then.” Renji beckoned Nishimura forward. “So Nishimura here is going to try and attack me, like usual.” He picked up what looked like a real sword of some kind from the ground and handed it to the other man, who accepted with a bow. 

“What we’re using here are iaitō, which are just blunted blades. Since the zanjutsu we do here isn’t focused on any one discipline in particular, you’ll be learning a mix of forms. Some of them are true iaijutsu, some of them are adapted from older battōjutsu practices, and some of them are iaidō—though that stuff’s mostly for meditation and not battle, so only a few of the kata are all that useful to us.”

Removing Zabimaru from his sash, Renji slid in another iaitō, resting his hand on the sheath just below the tsuba and tilting it slightly forward and down, so the blade was closer to horizontal. “There are two basic stances for iaijutsu forms. There’s the crouching posture, called iai-goshi, and the standing one, tachi-ai. Iaidō has a sitting one, too, or you can start from seiza. Mobility from either of them is really bad, though, so you’ll only be learning the quickest way to get up and actually fight from those.”

Renji crouched low, almost in seiza, but kept the balls of his feet and toes flat on the ground underneath him, one leg slightly forward compared to the other. Karin thought she could see the mechanics of it already, the way he could spring up quickly, and had enough mobility to turn with the standing motion if he had to. 

With a nod, he signaled for Nishimura to attack him. Karin’s classmate chose a straightforward downward arc, quick and effective, swift enough to part the air in front of it with a dull whistle. Renji’s hand was on the hilt of his sword faster than Karin could track, though, and the iaitō rasped free of its sheath with a slight ring. Renji brought it up to block effortlessly, catching Nishimura’s blade with a hard impact before it could complete its trajectory; Nishimura’s grip faltered. 

The follow-up was easy: Renji added the strength of his legs and other arm, bracing the back of the blade on his free palm and standing with the momentum of his draw. It forced Nishimura’s hands up above his head; Renji disengaged and swung in to score a quick rap on his wide-open ribcage. In the same smooth sequence, the vice-captain flourished his blade in a sharp outward motion, then slid it smoothly back home into the sheath. 

“What was that extra part for?” Karin asked, not bothering to raise her hand. She knew Renji didn’t give a shit about that kind of thing. 

“It’s meant to get the blood off the sword,” he replied, crossing his arms over his chest. “Not a concern here, but trust me when I say you don’t want to sheathe a bloody zanpakutō. Makes cleaning it a chore, and your spirit’ll probably hate you for a while.” 

Oh. Well, there went her chance to rib him for showing off. Still… that had been really cool. 

“Is it always defensive like that, or can you initiate with it as well?” That question came from Tojo. 

“Well, it was designed for response to sudden attacks, but there’s no reason you can’t initiate with it, if you’re good enough. The really expert practitioners learn how to use the momentum from the draw to hit a little bit faster than they would otherwise, but for most people it’s actually slower. You probably don’t want to try unless you’re committed to it as part of your style.”

After a few more questions, Renji demonstrated several more of the crouching katas, and pretty soon they were all down in the iai-goshi, trying to maintain their balance and focus at the same time. It was hardest on the bigger guys like Tojo and Matsuda, but they were all so used to the conditioning by now that aside from the occasional wobble, it was just a matter of making it feel natural, automatic. 

“Nice block, Kurosaki,” Renji said as she swatted aside Nishimura’s strike. 

Karin grinned, bending her knees for the next one.

* * *

“Hey, so, uhh…” Abe rocked back on his heels, hands folded into the sleeves of his academy uniform. “Hotaru says you guys train here a lot. I could stand to be a little better at Hohō myself. Might be able to teach a couple of you some stuff I know about kidō in exchange?” He shrugged, his mouth pulling up to one side. 

He didn’t quite seem to be able to smile all the way on the left, where the scar was, so it kept him looking a bit lopsided, not quite sloppy, but… _askew_. That was the fancy word. 

Karin frowned skeptically. “What do you know about kidō that Yuzu doesn’t?” She jerked a thumb at her sister, currently attempting to _shunpō_ with some help from Uryū. 

Of course, he was only sporadically successful himself, so they weren’t getting too far. 

“Well, the kind that makes it out into the far districts doesn’t look a lot like this proper academy stuff, I’ll grant ya. But some of the ones we end up with are a little better in the right situations.” He rubbed at the stubble growing in over his jaw.

“Eh. Fine. I’m about to try and teach these dunderheads how to flash-step, so you can join.” She paused. “Who the hell is Hotaru, anyway?”

He arched both brows. “Hotaru Sugitani. That guy.” He pointed at their fourth with his chin. 

“Huh. Didn’t know that was his name.” 

“Well everyone’s so damn stuffy around here it doesn’t surprise me. Never had so many people call me ‘Abe’ in my life.” He dropped his arms loosely, then stretched one across his chest, in preparation for physical activity. 

Karin snorted. “What do you go by, then?”

“Mostly? ‘Hey you’ or ‘old guy.’ Shinjirō’s my actual name, though.” He switched arms. 

She considered him. He looked barely younger than her dad, but that wasn’t _that_ old. “Meet you halfway. Shinjirō-jii.” 

He laughed, the sound dangerously close to a cackle. “I was asking for that, I think.”

“As long as you know it.”

* * *

“You seemed to enjoy iaijutsu again today.” 

Karin had landed in her inner world in a slightly different place this time. Though really they were all kind of the same. Only the contours of the pockmarked landscape changed much at all. Well, and the shape of the clouds drifting by overhead, technically. 

She wondered if that was true of the whole thing. Couldn’t hurt to walk around, could it? So she took several steps forward, pausing to wait and see if the spirit would follow her. 

It did, gracefully placing its cranelike legs so as to avoid any loose pieces of ground, its tail trailing behind it in three long feather-strands. 

“I dunno,” she replied with a shrug. “I like it. It feels right somehow. Zanjutsu in general is fun.”

The bird made a humming noise, and for a time, they walked in silence. 

It was Karin who broke it. “You want me to talk about Yuzu, don’t you?”

“I want you to talk about whatever is going to help you progress,” it replied simply. 

“I’m jealous.” The words came out in a single gust of air; something about them was easier, in here, easier even than it had been with Uryū. Maybe because she was talking to herself, instead of someone else. 

“Of?”

She frowned, sucking in another breath and releasing it heavily. “Well, shikai, obviously. I really wanted to get it first. I’ve only got a couple more days until that Tōshirō guy’s record, too.” The thought didn’t sit well with her, particularly after she’d actually _met_ him. He was kind of a jerk. 

“Another obstacle to tear down?”

Karin clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Yes? No. I’m not sure.” Yuzu wasn’t an obstacle. She never stood in _anyone’s_ way, let alone Karin’s. If anything, she needed to do that more often. The record thing… she’d set that up like an obstacle. One that it looked like she was never going to be able to get past in time. She didn’t _feel_ any closer to shikai than she’d been on the day she found her spirit. 

“It’s just… I was the one that was always good at this kind of thing, you know?” Karin grimaced, folding her hands together behind her head. “I was the one who did the athletic stuff, and I kind of figured I’d be the one doing the dangerous stuff, too. I’m way more aggressive than she is.” 

She knew, now, that aggression and athleticism alone did not make a fighter. Obviously, kidō required more than that, but so did other things, like hakuda and even zanjutsu. Some of it, Karin thought she was picking up. Some of it, though… some of it still felt really far away. 

A glance up at the sky presented her with more moving clouds, thick and low-hanging thunderheads, but not a drop of rain. Go figure. 

“You don’t think you could be good at other things?”

She pushed out a short bark of laughter. “Like what? I’m crap at anything artistic or domestic.”

“So you chose this path because it was the only option, for you.”

Karin’s footsteps drew to a halt. _Had_ that been the reason? She chose it because she couldn’t see herself succeeding at anything else? She’d thought her reasons were better than that—more noble, in a sense—but what if that was really all it boiled down to?

“I’m not sure,” she said, chewing on the words before she let them back out again. “I don’t _think_ that was the reason. Or not the only reason.”

“Then why?”

“Hm.” She picked her feet up again and resumed walking. That pit in the landscape looked awfully familiar. Was it a repeating pattern? “I wanted… I want to be useful, somehow.” Come to think of it, that reason didn’t sound all that noble either. 

“After… after mom and Ichigo died, dad kinda fell to pieces, you know? He wasn’t _functional_ for a while, and even when he was, he ran out of energy really quick. It was…” She swallowed. “It was almost like we lost him, too, for a while there. Yuzu—Yuzu picked up the pieces and started putting them back together again. She did everything: cooked, cleaned, washed the laundry, boxed up mom and Ichigo’s things. Made sure the lights stayed on and the water kept running. Rescheduled clinic patients around dad’s bad days.” 

Karin shook her head. She could feel a knot pressing in on her chest, just under her heart. “And me… I couldn’t do any of that. The best I could do was not make things harder for them. I swore off crying, swore off being a burden, and just… existed.” One of her most vivid memories left from the living world was holding Yuzu in her arms a year after the whole thing, on the anniversary. Her sister had bawled and sobbed into her shoulder, but Karin couldn’t do it. She’d just sat there, feeling like someone had taken a shovel to her guts and scooped everything out, leaving raw pain around the very edges but nothing inside.

“This was supposed to be the way I could… make up for that. For all the times I hadn’t helped her. She worked so hard for us, and all I could do was make sure not to cry. It’s not a fair trade, is it?” 

She felt a spike in temperature as the bird wandered closer, walking now right beside her. Its head reached about halfway up her bicep, mostly due to its neck and legs. 

“And you feel that even this, she can do without you.”

“Tch. Sounds pretty awful when you put it like that.” That didn’t make it untrue, though. “It’s just… if Yuzu can do all these things by herself… who needs me at all? Aren’t I just the extra twin?” 

“Have you asked her how she feels?”

Karin looked at her feet, dropping her arms from their spot behind her head. “No. We don’t talk much about… then.” Sometimes, Karin thought about it, only to realize that a few more memories were blurrier than she thought they should be. She’d never forget her mom and her brother, she knew, but she did wonder if sometime in the future, she’d only have a vague sense of what they’d been like. She didn’t know how to feel about it. 

“Perhaps you should.”

“Yeah… maybe.”

* * *

“…Yuzu?”

Her sister looked up from the essay she was writing, meeting Karin’s eyes and blinking. “Hm?”

Karin pulled in a breath. Their room smelled like a strange combination of the bamboo plant growing on the desk, laundry detergent, the air from outside, and citrus, probably from cleaner. “Do you, uh… have a minute?”

She set her own books aside, closing her kidō theory textbook over on the notebook she was writing in. Yuzu, though wearing a slightly perplexed expression, nodded and did the same, arranging her things into a neat stack on her desk. 

“What is it, Karin?”

She frowned, searching for the words. It was one thing to know she _should_ talk to her sister about this—it was another thing all together to be able to _do_ it. “I wanted… to say I’m sorry.”

Yuzu pulled her legs up underneath her on her chair, folding her hands loosely into her lap. “For what? If this is because you ate my cookies again, it’s really not—”

“Er—no.” Karin shook her head, leaning back against the wall. She crossed her feet at the ankles on the bed, then uncrossed them again when it was uncomfortable. “I’m sorry about… about how I was after… mom and Ichigo.”

She turned her head to the side, but from the corner of her eye, she could see Yuzu stiffen, then relax, muscle by muscle. Her mouth dropped at the corners, though, and remained that way. 

“What do you mean?”

The end of Karin’s bed, where all her covers were pushed back into a messy pile, blurred slightly in her vision. “I didn’t help you. I told myself it was because I didn’t know how, but there were things I could have done. Answered phones, or cleaned, or anything like that. I just…”

Yuzu stood up, moving over to Karin’s bed, sitting on the edge before bracing both arms on the mattress and using them to push herself back, so she was sitting right next to her sister. Their hips, legs, and shoulders made solid contact when Yuzu leaned slightly to the left. 

“You took it really hard, Karin. We all did. I dealt with it in my way, and you dealt with it in yours. You don’t have to be sorry for that.”

Karin looked down at her hands in her lap. “Yeah, but… you took care of me, Yuzu. I leaned on you, because I was afraid to lean on dad. I didn’t want to be a burden—that was the one thing I promised myself. But really, I was. We were both burdens on you.” She could see that now. Not getting upset, not crying, not bringing things up or accidentally triggering memories… none of that meant she wasn’t a burden. She had barely been a functional _human being_.

“No you weren’t.” Yuzu’s voice wobbled. “Karin… you and dad were the only reason I could do anything back then. Sometimes… some mornings, I would lay there in bed and just want to cry or… or sleep forever. I didn’t… I didn’t know how I could possibly get up and do anything.” She took in a shuddering breath, pulling her lower lip between her teeth. 

Karin looked away. She’d never been good with this. 

“But you know what I told myself? I said ‘if I don’t get up now, then who will make lunch for Karin? Who will take dad’s appointments?’ I wanted… I wanted so badly to be as strong as you were being, but I wasn’t. I’m not. So… I tried to take care of the little things, for both of you.” There was a rustle as Yuzu dabbed at her eyes with her sleeves. 

“You really thought…? Yuzu, if it wasn’t for you, we’d have fallen apart and never put ourselves back together.” Karin slung an arm over her sister’s shoulder, tucking Yuzu into her side. 

Yuzu slid one of her own arms between Karin’s back and the wall and the other over her abdomen. “And you held me together,” she said softly. “Just like this.” With a tiny sniffle, she straightened partway and met Karin’s eyes. “It’s not about burdens, Karin. We just had to rely on each other. That’s what family does.”

Karin propped her chin on Yuzu’s head, the tension ebbing from her frame as she exhaled. “Yeah.”

* * *

“All right. That’s it for today, everyone. Let’s get organized for _Jinzen_.” Renji waved a hand and the cool-downs ceased immediately. 

“Kurosaki.” Karin glanced up, to find that Nishimura was holding a hand out, palm up, towards her. “I’ll take your bokken back.”

She cocked her head at him, suspicious for half a second, but then flipped it over in her grip and handed it to him hilt-first. It wasn’t like there was anything he could do with it—they just put them on racks to one side of the dojo. He nodded, turning to take care of them. Karin, meanwhile, found her usual spot for meditation. 

She’d been trying not to think about it, but today was the day. The deadline for her challenge. She knew it wasn’t really that important, but even recognizing that, part of her still wanted it. Still wanted to know that she could get past this obstacle in the time frame she’d set herself. 

Settling into a cross-legged posture, she removed her zanpakutō from the sash at her waist and laid it over her knees. Rubbing a thumb over a spot of some kind on the copper-colored, octagonal tsuba, she wiped it away and straightened her posture. Letting her eyes fall shut, Karin entered her inner world. 

The bird was standing at the edge of one of the pockmarks in the landscape, looking down into it with a tilted head. 

“What are you doing?” Karin asked, moving to stand beside it and crossing her arms. The crater looked the same as it always did—too dark to see the bottom, roughly circular, and that was about it. 

The bird lifted its head, humming quietly. “Waiting for you.”

“Well… I’m here now.”

“So I see.” Taking a step back from the crater, the bird fluffed its feathers. “And you spoke with your sister.”

“…Yeah. I really should have a long time ago.”

“Did you learn anything?”

She considered it. “I think… I think we were both just doing the best we could. She doesn’t want me to blame myself for not being any help back then.” Karin had found it surprising that Yuzu saw those days so differently. It seemed that, close as they were, there were still things they didn’t know about each other. Not just the new things, either. 

“Do you?”

“Mm…” She rocked back onto her heels, tipping her upper body forward slightly to compensate. Not that it would hurt here if she fell—the ground was too spongy. “I’m not sure. I want… I want to be able to forgive myself, but… in some ways it feels like I haven’t been able to change since then, you know?” 

She sighed. “Yuzu adapts. She changes, learns new things. She grows, and because of that, I didn’t really have to do anything much. And now… I’m not sure I know how. You keep talking about how I set my problems up like obstacles, but that’s just what I’ve always done. It’s the way I know how to be, and I’m not sure I can learn some other way.”

“And so, when you feel trapped, you try to break through a new wall, is that right?”

Karin nodded. “Yeah. That works for me, most of the time. But what happened to mom and Ichigo… that’s not a wall. I couldn’t just… smash through my feelings. So I was useless for more than a whole year. I don’t want to be like that anymore.” She chewed on the inside of her lip. 

“Even when I wanted to do this, to come here… I asked Yuzu to take the exams with me because I was scared of doing it alone. I’ve never been alone, my whole life, not in anything. And I don’t really want to be, but… I want to know that I _could_ be, if I had to.” 

“And in order to do that…” the bird prompted. 

“In order to do that, I need to learn more than one way to solve my problems,” Karin said with a sigh. “I don’t have to be my sister, which is good, because I couldn’t, any more than she could be me. But I have to… unstick myself. To go in a new direction, especially when the normal one isn’t working.” 

If birds could smile, she thought this one might be. “Change is not always a bad thing,” it said. 

Karin’s brows knit together over her eyes. “Yeah, I guess not.” She sighed. “Anyway, I think _Jinzen’s_ probably about over for today, so I guess I’ll talk to you next time.” Karin shut her eyes, preparing to leave her inner world, but just before she faded out, she felt a weight on her shoulder. 

Startled, she opened her eyes again, taking a half-step to the side. The bird, large as it was, balanced easily in place even when she moved, its face close enough to hers that she had to cross her eyes to see it. 

“You certainly still need to work on your patience,” it chided, but there was amusement in its voice. “But perhaps that is one of those things that will come in time. For now, wouldn’t you like to know my name?”

* * *

She blinked her eyes open, back in the dojo where she’d begun, only…

“Hey, Abarai.”

He frowned at her. “You could at least _try_ to remember to call me sensei.” He rolled his eyes when she didn’t correct herself. “What, Kurosaki?”

“What do we do when we think we’ve got shikai?”

Suddenly, all the attention in the room was fixed on her, but Karin couldn’t have cared less if she tried. She only cared about the answer to her question, at this moment. 

“Uhh…” Renji trailed off, apparently unprepared for such a blunt query. “Come here and stand in the middle. Everyone else, move back.” He waved his hands in a general shooing motion.

The others took up spots against the wall; Karin could see Yuzu whispering excitedly to Uryū. She flashed them both a grin. They smiled back, and she felt something warm in her chest. She could do this. She could unstick herself and _move_. 

“Whenever you’re ready,” Renji said. 

Karin nodded, placing a hand on the hilt of her katana. 

“ _Sobiero, Hisaku_!”

She drew the blade from tachi-ai, and the result was not quite what she’d expected. Her arc motion was controlled and careful, but on the draw, the sword sparked, flinging an arc of flame outwards. She heard a low curse from behind her, and then Zabimaru interceded over her shoulder, twisting to block the red fire before it could hit the walls of the dojo. 

The hilt of Hisaku still felt warm in her hand, and she looked down at it. The blade itself was still a katana, the cutting edge made of the same bright steel; the blunt side was black instead. From the very end of the hilt dangled a glimmering, red-and-gold feather, about as long as her hand from wrist to fingertip. It was tied to the kashira with a short length of braided thread. 

Karin huffed a short laugh. She understood now. She wasn’t supposed to go only _forward_. 

She was meant to _rise_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Iaijutsu_ – 居合術 – This one’s hard. The kanji are literally “to be/reside” “to join/fit” and “art.” I think this is meant to refer to the fact that the sword exists or resides in the sheath, and fits back in or rejoins it after the draw. In any case, iaijutsu is a particular sword art which revolves around quickly drawing the blade from the sheath (usually in response to an attack, though as Renji points out, you _can_ initiate a fight with it), performing a certain sequence of maneuvers, and then returning it to the sheath. The last move before the return is usually meant to cast blood off the blade for a clean return. _Battōjutsu_ (抜刀術) is an old term for iaijutsu, and so in Soul Society at least, some of the older forms of the art are still called that. _Iaidō_ (居合道) is a similar but not identical practice. The main difference is that the emphasis in iaijutsu is on battle-readiness, and so for example none of the moves start from a fully-seated position, because who the hell is going to be sitting in the middle of a battle? Plus sitting or being in seiza really restricts a fighter’s mobility and capacity to fend off attackers from other directions. Iaidō also has a spiritual/mental component that iaijutsu lacks.
> 
>  _-jii_ – 祖父 – “Old man.” Most commonly seen in “ojiisan,” which is the Japanese word for grandfather. Like many ‘family’ words, however, it can also be applied to other people of the right age and gender, and jii can be used by itself as an honorific, of a sort. Here, Karin is basically calling Abe “old man Shinjirō” or “gramps,” a reference to the fact that he is/looks considerably older than the rest of the students (though he doesn’t actually appear elderly). Kyōraku refers to Yamamoto as “Yama-jii,” which has a similar informal connotation.
> 
>  _Kashira_ – 頭 – “Head.” The pommel of a katana. I also use the word _tsuba_ (鍔) a lot; that’s the hand guard or crossguard in western parlance. The hilt is properly called the _tsuka_ (柄).
> 
>  _Hisaku_ – 緋鷟 – “Scarlet Phoenix.” Can also be read as “Blood Phoenix.” Karin’s zanpakutō, which is a katana with a red feather attached to the end. Also apparently has some fire-based properties. Its release command is _sobiero_ (聳えろ), the imperative of “to rise.”
> 
> * * *
> 
> So, there’s shikai number two. Achieved on the exact deadline she set herself, for those of you who like it when things work out neatly. A little bit of rationale for this choice: phoenixes are, of course, famous in mythology for reincarnating themselves after they reach the end of their life cycles and die. They, quite literally, rise from the ashes of their former selves. Also, Isshin’s zapakutō, Engetsu, is a fire-type. So if this were the canon universe, Ichigo would have the “getsu” (moon) part (and _Getsuga Tenshō_ ), and Karin would have the “en” (scathing) part (the fire abilities). Yuzu is a little different, but hers is actually thematically connected to (her second cousin) Kaien Shiba’s: it’s a polearm with a spear-point, smells like rain, and is named after a flower that grows on top of water. 
> 
> Am I a huge nerd? Why yes; yes I am. I think the tendency is mostly harmless.


	9. May

“So, are you two planning on signing up to take the graduation exams?” Shinjirō took another large bite of noodles, making a small sound of satisfaction. 

Yuzu smiled. It was nice to make food for a bigger group—she could try more things. 

Karin’s expression was decidedly more skeptical, and she gave him a look from the side of her eyes. “Duh. I mean, what’s the point of sticking around when we can learn anything we missed from our higher-ups anyway? As long as we pass, we know we’re going in just as good as anyone who took six years.” Lowering the hand that held her chopsticks, she picked her teacup up with the other and chased her food with a drink. 

Yuzu hummed. “I don’t know,” she hedged. “I mean, I’d feel more comfortable making sure I had the curriculum right before I tried to move on to anything else.” 

“So take the exam,” Karin replied bluntly. “If there’s something you aren’t good enough at, they’ll fail you and you can do another year.” She paused for a moment. “Not that you’re going to fail anything. You can _shunpō_ whenever you want now, and your zanjutsu’s way better than it used to be.”

Still unsure, Yuzu grimaced slightly, stealing a look at the others. Uryū ate with the same minimalist grace as he used for everything else. Sugitani had already finished his first bowl and was busy refilling it from the dishes laid out on the table. He caught her eye on his way back down into his seat and half-smiled. 

“She’s right. You would pass. But nothing says you must take the exams simply because you qualify.”

“Sure, but why wouldn’t you?” Shinjirō asked around a mouthful of food. When Karin glared at him, he swallowed thickly and grinned. “Just think about it. If you score in the top twenty on the exams, you’re practically guaranteed a seated officer position right out of Shin’ō. Plus, everyone’s talking about you two by now: the ‘genius twins’ who already have shikai. You’d probably get your pick of squads.”

“In any case,” Uryū broke in, “you don’t have to decide right now. You still have a month before the exam registration deadline.”

Yuzu pursed her lips. On the one hand, the prospect _was_ a little exciting. Graduates at or near the top of the class were, she’d heard, generally treated as Shinjirō suggested. Often given a choice between several divisions instead of being sorted according to need. Few had shikai, even among the sixth-years. She and Karin would be at a considerable advantage in the process. But at the same time… in electing to take the exams, she’d be pitting her skills in the other shinigami arts against people who’d been studying them for half a decade more. 

Yuzu knew without a doubt that Karin would take such a thing as a challenge, and overcome it spectacularly. She, on the other hand…

_The choice is yours to make, but remember your resolve._

She popped another clump of rice in her mouth, and smiled to herself when Karin snatched some eel from Uryū’s plate. At least she still had time to think about it.

* * *

“How are things here?” 

Rukia shrugged. “About the same as they’ve been for a while now. It’s hard, sometimes, when Ukitake-taichō is having one of his bad phases, but we’re pretty used to it.” 

They wound around the practice field at the barracks. Rukia drew to a stop as they reached the apex of the hill, which looked down on the dirt ring below. Several shinigami were sparring against one another with their zanpakutō; an unusual sight to Uryū, who was accustomed to seeing only wooden blades wielded against his classmates. Several more were taking turns at a set of kidō targets. 

“I suppose they must have more practice than most, doing things without too much oversight.” He watched a _shakkahō_ fizzle out only halfway to the target. Then again, perhaps a bit of oversight might not have been a bad idea. 

Rukia sighed. “It’s strange,” she replied. “Lots of these people wouldn’t have been practicing half so hard a couple of years ago. I think knowing that there’s a war coming gives them a reason to try a little harder, but…”

“The favorable result doesn’t make the actual situation any better.”

“Yeah.” Her lips pursed as she watched the others train, something soft touching the corners of her eyes. “I’m glad they’re trying to prepare, but I can’t help but think it won’t really help anything.” 

He didn’t contradict her; she was likely correct. What the unseated or lower-seat officers were like in terms of strength probably wouldn’t make a bit of difference against whatever Aizen had planned. At most, they might be able to fend off some weak Hollows. An endeavor worth pursuing, for the souls in the living world it might save. But one that would ultimately mean nothing, if Aizen defeated the captains and vice-captains. 

“They don’t really understand, do they?” he asked, adjusting his classes. 

She sighed again. “No. I think the Sōtaichō has ordered silence on any of the details. Probably for the sake of morale.” 

Uryū hated the very idea of lying to someone for _the sake of morale_ , but it wasn’t something he got to decide. He knew things might be worse if they knew—fewer of these people would be out here training. Some of them might suffer worse consequences if they really contemplated their own inability to make a difference. But it would be honest, and those that pushed through anyway would have a sturdier resolve. 

To him, this just looked like giving the cannon fodder hope, and it made him sick. 

“It’s not all bad,” Rukia said softly from beside him. “We are getting better. I think that when things are over, we’ll need that strength, and the camaraderie we get from training together.”

Only then did it really occur to him that, as an unseated shinigami, Rukia might well be considered expendable herself. His stomach turned. 

“Are you…?” He wasn’t sure how to finish the question. 

“I’m all right.” She smiled at him.

He had the feeing she understood what he was driving at—he was grateful for that. “They still haven’t promoted you?”

She grimaced; he knew, somehow, that he was asking a loaded question. 

“No.”

“You deserve to be an officer, if you want to be. You’re strong enough.” Not to mention everything _else_ she’d been through. 

A breeze stirred in the air, carrying the scent of sweat, soot, and dry earth. It pushed their hair away from their faces—Rukia suddenly looked much younger. No more than the teenaged girl she would have been in the living world. 

“Thanks,” she murmured. “I mean it.”

He nodded. 

They stepped away from the field, and continued towards the barracks building. It was made of the same white stone as most of the buildings in the Seireitei, with a vermillion-tiled roof and a prominent thirteen—inside the rhombus design all the Gotei divisions shared— displayed over the door. 

As he’d discovered last time he was here, each division had a complex rather than a single barracks, though he hadn’t had much time to figure out what all the buildings were for. Apparently, multiple sleeping quarters, a mess hall, storage, one office building at least, and training rings were all standard, and some had other facilities based on specialization or the captain’s whim. 

Ukitake-taichō lived in a separate building, not uncommon for captains. His was surrounded by a koi pond and gardens, but for the moment, they stuck to the main area of the complex. 

Occasionally, Uryū would catch a shinigami or two looking at him, but they all looked away as soon as he made eye contact, hurrying to resume whatever they’d been doing. At least it wasn’t a crowd, like before the exams. 

“You’re pretty infamous around here,” Rukia said on the third such occasion. “You and now the Kurosaki twins, too.”

Uryū frowned. “I would hope they at least are not _infamous_.”

She shook her head. “Well, yes and no. Opinions vary, on all of you, but it hasn’t gone unnoticed, how well you’re doing. People are already speculating about which squad you’ll end up in. I get a _lot_ of questions about you.”

“That’s quite preemptive, isn’t it?” He wasn’t, after all, going to _be_ in a squad. 

…was he? 

Urahara hadn’t actually specified, which was probably something Uryū should have noticed before now. What the other man had said was that if it became _necessary_ , he could get Uryū out of the Soul Society.

He couldn’t imagine staying. 

But it was also difficult to imagine leaving. 

He’d return to Karakura, and… what? Wait for the war to begin? Train with Urahara and Yoruichi? That part was believable enough, but—what then? Would the shinigami even accept his help if he left? Would they have a choice? Dare he think so far ahead as to wonder what became of him afterwards?

“I don’t know,” Rukia replied thoughtfully, tilting her head. “I think it makes sense. They’ll be able to take the graduation exams, if they want, and people always speculate about the geniuses. And you, well… I think everyone here who knows you expects you to do well.”

“And the people who don’t know me?”

She shrugged. “The usual. Your presence here is kind of a scandal, but it’s got everyone talking about the Quincy again.”

“Good.” At least he’d done that much. Negative or positive, he wasn’t about to let anyone forget what he was, if he could avoid it. Even if he was still trying to negotiate the rest with himself, he’d never _stop_ being a Quincy. They’d just have to deal with that.

* * *

The kidō practice field, Yuzu had discovered, was empty in the late afternoon just before dinner. Since she had more general practice with the others at night, and did her homework between classes and after dinner, it was the ideal time to come here and practice new incantations. 

The standard kidō curriculum for the six years at Shin’ō consisted of the first thirty each of Hadō and Bakudō. It was expected that the average graduate be able to produce those spells, and to be able to manage at least the first ten in each category without incantation. 

The first class, having an advanced curriculum, was taught the first forty, and expected to be able to do the initial twenty without incantation. 

Yuzu, knowing that she had to be even better than that to make up for what would likely be very average zanjutsu scores at best—and unexceptional hohō ones—had made it her aim to know the spells through sixty, and perform as many of them without incantation as she possibly could. This was no simple task, however; even producing a spell at those higher levels was extremely difficult, requiring a level of focus and control that pushed the very limits of her capability. 

But it was worth doing, and she wanted to do it. 

She moved her legs apart, about shoulder width. Standing how she was comfortable was important—if she was distracted even for a moment, she might not be able to hold the spell properly. Rolling her shoulders until they were loose, she shook out her hands and bent her knees slightly. 

Closing her eyes, she focused inwards, feeling for her reiryoku. It was a strange sensation, one she couldn’t really compare to anything else. She supposed that if people could feel their blood in their veins, it would be a little bit like that. Something under her skin but part of her, and constantly in a slow, steady motion, circulating through her like a deep river. 

Focusing on the current, Yuzu raised her arms, imagining that river inside herself changing course and flowing into her arms, her hands, and collecting there. 

“ _Bakudō #39: Enkōsen_.” She pushed the collected energy outwards, shaping it with her mind into a concave disc, and held it steady. _Enkōsen_ , she had found was one of the best spells to practice with. While it functioned as a shield, a sheet of reiatsu, it required constant, steady upkeep—else the edges would begin to waver and it would shatter. The visual feedback helped her tune the exact balance of the energy, and match what she felt to what she saw. 

She didn’t think she was doing it quite right, though. It was steady, but _enkōsen_ were supposed to be pale gold. Hers was tinged magenta—the same thing happened with her _shakkahō_ , and most of her other spells. No one else seemed to have this difficulty producing the right form, if they could do the spell. 

Frowning, Yuzu studied it, trying to make small adjustments in her reiryoku flow in hopes that it would correct itself. When she tapered off the energy, it did seem to clear a little, but it also thinned dangerously, and she shook her head, returning it to the way it had been. 

“That’s not right…”

“ _Hadō #4: Byakurai_.”

Blue lightning slammed into Yuzu’s shield, startling her from her thoughts. The abrupt impact distracted her, and the resulting fluctuation in her reiryoku meant the bolt put a crack dead in the center of the disc. It spread outwards rapidly, spiderwebbing over the _enkōsen’s_ surface due to the sheer force of the strike. 

Sucking in a sharp breath, Yuzu steadied the shield, locking it down against the impact of the second and third bolts. The crack grew each time, inching wider. If it got to both outside edges, she probably wouldn’t be able to keep it together. 

As suddenly as the assault had started, it halted, and Yuzu peered through the translucent shield to see a pink-tinged Kozu-sensei. Her arms were crossed, and a jagged smile split her face. 

“Pretty good, Kurosaki. You almost lost it there in the beginning though.” She stepped forward, poking the _enkōsen_ with her first finger. “Incantation?”

Yuzu shook her head. “No, sensei.”

Kozu raised her eyebrows, blinking once. “No? Huh.” She rapped the shield with her knuckles, then ran a hand along the edge of it. “This is nice and solid.” 

“W-well, I’d been holding it for a while already, so I had time to make some adjustments—”

“Kurosaki. I complimented you. Accept it.”

“Y-yes, sensei. Thank you, sensei.” She felt her face warming.

“Better.” Kozu stepped back and nodded, indicating that Yuzu could release the spell. 

She cut off the flow, and the shield burst apart in a cascade of pink sparks. 

“Pretty,” her instructor remarked. 

Yuzu wasn’t sure if that one was actually a compliment or not, so she didn’t respond to it. “Um, sensei?”

“Yes?”

“The color of the spells. Mine aren’t… right. Is there some way I can fix them?”

Kozu tilted her head sideways, eyes narrow. “Do you care?”

“What?”

“Do you care what color they are? They work properly, don’t they?” The instructor shifted her weight, raising one leg and setting her foot against the side of her knee.

“Well… not if they still work. But I wasn’t sure if it meant I was doing something wrong. The textbook says—”

Kozu snorted, waving a hand. “Screw the textbook. If your kidō are doing what they’re supposed to do—and clearly they are—you shouldn’t worry about the other stuff. Are you taking the exams?”

The abrupt shift in the direction of the conversation left Yuzu feeling unbalanced. “I… I don’t know yet.”

Kozu scratched her head, then raked a hand through her thick ponytail, throwing it over her shoulder. “Why not? I can tell you right now that the Corps would take you. Some people reckon that would be a waste of your talents, what with already having shikai, but I’m a little biased in its favor.” She grinned. “But what I mean to say is, anything you could learn with more time here, you could learn in a squad, or with the Corps. Expectations are high for you, and your sister, but nobody thinks you know everything you’ll ever need to, so don’t let that be what holds you back, okay?”

“Okay.” Yuzu nodded. There was more to consider—but she couldn’t deny that had been a big part of it. 

“Good. Now. What’s the highest-level Hadō you can do?”

* * *

“Hm. You really need to figure out what that technique is called.”

Karin stared flatly at Renji. “What do you mean, ‘figure out’? It’s my technique; can’t I just name it whatever I want?” 

Renji shrugged. “I mean, yeah, sure. In the same way you could name your zanpakutō whatever you want. But if you want to actually be able to _use_ it for anything…”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it.” Probably that was something she’d have to work out with Hisaku. 

“Well… for now, just try it again.” Renji took up a ready stance, holding the sealed Zabimaru in front of him. 

So far, directing the flames Hisaku could produce had proved touch-and-go. Karin knew she was getting better already, but that mostly just meant she could generate the flames at will now, not that she could do much with them after she’d managed to. It was easier to spark them on a drawing motion, for some reason, but she could also fling them by charging the blade with her reiatsu and then swinging it.

Sliding Hisaku back into the sheath, Karin crouched for the draw, using her left hand to angle her zanpakutō for a faster swing. Her right hovered above the tsuka for a moment—she waited for Renji to nod, then gripped it swiftly. 

Hisaku slid free with a rasp, and Karin pushed her reiatsu into the blade at the same time. Bright red fire bloomed along the edge, and she shaped her arc so that it would fly straight for Renji. The flames shot forward, but by the time Karin had completed the iaijutsu form and returned the katana to its sheath, they had guttered out nearly entirely. Renji had no trouble dispersing what was left, and he stood straight again with a frown. 

Karin huffed, her frustration rising to the surface. “Are you sure naming this technique will help?”

“Positive,” he replied. “Kidō blades like yours usually have a bunch of techniques that you have to figure out. You’re probably also going to want to improve your reiatsu control. And keep practicing; that should let you push it out to further distances.” 

Karin looked down at her sword, frowning. She’d _thought_ Hisaku had acknowledged her will to break herself out of her rut. But she damn well wasn’t making it easy. 

_If it were easy, you would have done it already_.

Uppity bird. 

“Hey.” Renji slung Zabimaru back over one of his shoulders. “It might not seem like it, but you’re making good progress. Kidō blades are tricky compared to melee ones like mine. That doesn’t mean it won’t be really good, when you have it figured out.” 

“Yeah, well,” Karin groused. “I guess not everyone can be a simpleminded monkey like you.” Her eyes narrowed. 

“I should just stop being nice to you,” he said, scowling. “Obviously you’re an ungrateful brat.”

“Yep,” she said, popping the ‘p’ at the end of the word. “But since you’re such a loser, no one at your division will spar with you, so you’re stuck with this brat for now.” She grinned. 

Renji rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say Kurosaki. Now come on. Quit talking with your mouth and start talking with your sword.” He removed his zanpakutō from his shoulder and held it at an angle in front of him, passing his free hand over the blade. “ _Hoero, Zabimaru_.”

“You asked for it,” Karin replied, though in truth she was surprised he’d bothered to release his sword. He surely wouldn’t need to, to beat her. 

But that reasoning only applied if his goal was just to beat her. 

When Zabimaru flew for her, coiling in to strike from the left, Karin jumped out of the way with a _shunpō_ step, drawing Hisaku and slashing for his shoulder in the same stroke. But his zanpakutō was suddenly there, and her blade clanged off with a ringing rapport. Karin’s shoulders jarred with the force of the impact, and she barely managed to get away in time to avoid Zabimaru’s next hit. 

She landed out of that flash step harder than she’d thought, but she had barely any time at all to recover before Zabimaru was there _again_ , coming in from the right this time. Karin dug in her heels and blocked, pushing with her arms and her reiatsu to repel the attack. Her whole body shook with the effort, but she did manage to fling Zabimaru away, giving herself just enough time to duck out from underneath the returning swing. 

It occurred to her after about the tenth almost-hit that Renji was slowing himself down for her sake, and by a lot, if her guess was anything to go by. She would have been offended by that, once, but now she understood that it _was_ for her sake—specifically, the sake of her improvement rather than her safety. 

She jumped over a low sweep, using the recovery time he was maintaining to get in close, swinging with Hisaku for his midsection. Zabimaru blocked, but she disengaged before it could become a lock and spun to the side, kicking high for his chin in a hakuda move. 

“Ha!” He swayed far enough to the side to avoid it—if only just—and brought his sword around again. “That was good thinking.”

She felt the grin growing over her face again. 

“…for a birdbrain.”

It immediately reverted to a scowl. 

“I hate you.”

* * *

Practice was over for the night, and Sugitani and Abe had since departed, leaving the other three to finish up in their own time. 

They’d cleaned all the supplies up a while ago. Uryū wasn’t _exactly_ sure when they’d wound up laying in the middle of the field, heads close together and the rest of them spread further out, like spokes on a wheel. But they were there, and he found that he had no particular desire to move. 

Moving meant he’d have to go back to his room, and then go to sleep. That meant he would end up in his inner world, and he’d have more useless dreams in which he got nowhere with the spirit. It still seemed reluctant or unable to talk, and the more he tried, the more uncomfortable he became. 

He much preferred this. 

“Have you decided whether you’re going to take the exams, Yuzu?” he asked, twining his fingers together just below his ribcage. The field lights were dim enough that they could see the night sky, for the most part. Unsurprisingly, the constellations in Soul Society were different from those he’d seen in the living world. He wondered if the stars were even real. Did Soul Society have an outer space? What would even be there?

She sighed, softly enough that it almost went unheard. “I’m still not sure. Part of me really wants to—I’m not sure the opportunity will ever quite be the same. But…” Yuzu made a small noise, just articulate enough to convey her lingering doubt. 

“What divisions would the two of you want to be in, if you could choose? Or would you prefer something other than the Gotei 13?”

“Well, we all know _I’m_ not the one who could make the Kidō Corps,” Karin drawled. “I might do okay in the Ōnmitsukidō, but sneaking around really isn’t my style. I guess maybe a division that likes swordfighting? The Eleventh or the Seventh or something.”

“I think the Eleventh has an unofficial rule against kidō-type zanpakutō, though,” Yuzu pointed out. 

Karin mumbled something cranky under her breath. “Yeah, well… I guess that sucks for them, then.” She paused. “Renji said he was serious about wanting me to be in the Sixth. Don’t tell him I said this, but I’m considering it. I’d hate to lose a sparring partner when I don’t really care that much what division I go to anyway.”

“Rukia-san’s brother is captain of the Sixth,” Uryū said. “He’s… not at all like Abarai.”

“Yeah, but… I don’t think captains interact much with the lower seats anyway. That’s why it’d be smart to join the Sixth. If I know the vice-captain, I’m already doing pretty well for myself.” 

She had a point. 

“I’m not sure I really have a preference, either,” Yuzu said. “I haven’t given it a lot of thought—it always seemed like there was so much time between now and then. Kozu-sensei thinks I would do well in the Kidō Corps, but I don’t know. I like kidō a lot, but I’m not sure I want to give up things like training with Hasuhime to do more of it.”

“What about you, Uryū?” There was a rustle as Karin rolled halfway over onto her arm to look at him. “First Quincy shinigami—where do _you_ go?”

“Nowhere, if I can’t get my zanpakutō to cooperate,” he muttered darkly. 

Karin frowned. “Okay, yeah, that’s not great that it isn’t talking to you, but like… even if you never get it to release, you can make up the difference with your Quincy powers, right? I dunno how that stuff works, but if you were good enough to beat a captain before, you’re good enough to make a squad.”

Uryū had to exert conscious effort not to flinch. “I don’t… have my Quincy powers anymore,” he admitted, eyes fixed firmly on the sky. 

Karin took in a little surprised breath, and he heard Yuzu make a soft ‘oh’ sound. 

“What… what happened to them?”

He clenched his jaw. “I needed more power, to fight that captain. So… I used an artifact called a sanrei glove to alter my… I suppose you’d call it my reishi absorption ability. The result was a lot of power at once, but the price was the loss of the ability itself afterwards. And since all Quincy powers rely on reishi absorption…” he trailed off. 

“That sucks,” Karin said, flopping back down onto the grass. 

He thought that expressed the truth of things rather efficiently. 

“Our mother was a Quincy.” Yuzu said the words softly. 

Uryū sat up abruptly, twisting around to look at the both of them. “What?”

Yuzu rose much more slowly, pulling her legs underneath her. “That’s what dad says. It… didn’t really mean much, when we learned it, but he told us we always had to keep it secret, because people here wouldn’t understand.” She smiled wanly. 

“When we met you, I thought it was really impressive, the way you didn’t try to hide it for even a second.” 

Karin made a noise of agreement. “Though it wasn’t too smart.”

He recalled the crowds and supposed she was right. “But… if your mother was… are the two of you…?”

Yuzu shook her head. “No. Or at least, we didn’t inherit her powers. Ichigo might have, but…” She shrugged helplessly. 

Right. Both their brother and their mother had been consumed by the same Hollow, on the same day. Uryū had never believed the world was a fair place, but even he had to acknowledge that such a circumstance was crueler than he usually expected. 

He wasn’t really sure what to say. “I’m sorry you’ve had to hide that about yourselves.” The very thought was anathema to him, but he couldn’t blame them or Isshin for the choice. He was ostracized now as, well, _nearly_ an adult. They had only been children. 

“I don’t plan on it, anymore,” Karin said bluntly. “I mean, I’m not going to go around telling people at random or whatever, but if anyone asks, I’m going to tell them straight. Our mom deserves that much.” 

Yuzu nodded. “Besides… you’ve managed just fine, Uryū. You might… you might be starting to change some people’s minds. I want to be part of that, if I can. I think mom would be happy that we felt strong enough to try.”

Uryū pursed his lips. “I can think of at least one way to start.”

* * *

“Hey, Karin. Karin, wake up.”

“Mmph?” Karin swatted away the hand Yuzu was shaking her with. “’M up. What’s the emergency?”

Yuzu grinned. “No emergency. Look!” She straightened from where she’d leaned over Karin’s bed and gestured to her desk. 

Karin rolled herself off the mattress, her bare feet touching the tatami with soft thuds. Stretching her arms above her head, she yawned and padded over to the desk. 

“…he’s such a dork.”

There, laying on her desk, was a new sash. It was predominantly red—but when she unfolded it, she snorted. Sewn into the silk was a big white cross.

A Quincy cross.

“Huh. He even adjusted it for iaijutsu.” The sash had an extra string to hold her zanpakutō, in the style of sword-drawing specialists. That… would actually be really useful. 

“See what I have?” Yuzu held up a deep blue scarf, also with a cross on it, and then wrapped it loosely around her neck. It clashed a bit with the red details of her uniform, but it would undoubtedly look really good with a black shihakushō.

“I think he might be telling you to take the exams, Yuzu.” Or, well… suggesting that he believed she’d succeed, anyway. 

Yuzu seemed content not to comment on that, but she did play with the end of the scarf in her hand for a moment. “I think this is the perfect way to start, actually. It’s not overt, since a sash or scarf is kind of folded, but… if anyone asks about the pattern…” 

They could explain pretty easily. 

“Yeah,” Karin said, a smile tugging at one corner of her mouth. “Makes sense to me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Enkōsen_ – 円閘扇 – “Round Lock Fan.” A kidō spell used to create a circular shield. It’s Bakudō #39.
> 
>  _Byakurai_ – 白雷 – “Pale Lightning.” A kidō spell that does pretty much what it says on the tin: generates a bolt of lightning. It’s Hadō #4. Despite being a low-level spell, in the hands of a master like Kozu (or, in canon, Byakuya), it can be devastating.
> 
> * * *
> 
> One more chapter down. Next time: the exam registration deadline is upcoming, and Uryū still doesn’t have a shikai. Uh-oh.


	10. June

“Why are you here?”

The spirit was small today, in a way that reminded Uryū of a child. It produced the voice to match, but the uncanny thing was that its eyes still looked ancient. He wasn’t sure he liked it, this… entity. Intellectually, he knew that whatever it was, it was part of him, but knowing that and bringing himself to really _acknowledge_ it were two separate things. It asked a pertinent question, though. 

“To speak with you.”

“Why?”

Uryū went for honesty. If it was really part of himself, it would know if he lied anyway. “Because I want to know your name.”

“Why?”

He sighed heavily, eyeing it. What was it Urahara had said? A difficult spirit often meant a strong sword? He certainly hoped so. Stepping over the threshold into the dark portion of his inner world, Uryū sat down. He had a feeling this wasn’t going to be a short conversation. 

“Because if you tell me what it is, I’ll be able to use shikai.”

It drifted over towards him—most of its lower half was amorphous cloud at present. The spirit blinked its too-bright eyes and tilted its head to the side. “Is that important?”

Uryū’s brows drew together. “Yes.”

“Why?”

He suppressed the urge to groan, trying to maintain his patience. “It grants me another power, one that might be useful against the people I have to fight. I need to be stronger if I’m to succeed, and I _must_ succeed.”

Its head tilted a little further, and it didn’t even have to voice the question this time. It was simply understood. 

“It’s the right thing to do. The people I’ll be fighting—they want to change everything. And not in a good way. They’ll kill as many people as they have to to do it. Humans, shinigami, ordinary souls just trying to go about their lives. They don’t care about those people. It’s wrong, and I have to stop it.” Or at least contribute as much as he could. 

“It’s good to have principles,” the spirit said, its childlike voice almost sad. “They’re like stars.” 

“Stars…?” Uryū considered the metaphor. ‘Gaseous celestial bodies’ obviously wasn’t the intended meaning. Sources of light? He glanced to the other half of the inner world, where Lucia slumbered. It was true that his principles were connected very closely with his pride as a Quincy. After all, it was because he was a Quincy that he had those principles. It was their way. 

“…they’re the best parts of me,” he murmured. Like the stars were the best parts of the night sky. That seemed to fit more than anything else. It was his principles that guided him through most everything. They shaped how he viewed the world and how he made his decisions. If not for them, he might have never stopped to help Rukia the night he met her, nor elected to go to Soul Society to retrieve her. He wouldn’t be _here_ , certainly.

The spirit blinked slowly. “But they are not the only parts of you.”

“…no.” Uryū looked down at his hands. He thought he understood what it was trying to get at now. 

“I also… have to succeed because there are things I must overcome.” 

“Like what?”

He swallowed. “I’m not… I’m not strong enough to protect what I care about. Every time I—” Uryū’s jaw clenched. “It’s easy to be attached to or defined by a principle, because even if I failed to defend it, or was defeated in the effort… the only person who would bear the consequences for that is me.” Uryū knew he was resilient; he had the scars to prove it, so to speak. But there was more to it than just that. 

“But when what you are attached to is a person, and not an idea…”

He inclined his head, still staring fixedly at his hands. He folded them together and squeezed. “It hurts,” he rasped. “And I feel… weak.” Inadequate. Lost. 

“Why does that make you feel weak?”

He pulled in a deep breath. “Because if I love something… I lose it. Always.”

Uryū thought of his grandfather. The person he’d loved most in all the world. But when the time came, he’d been unable to do anything to protect him. He’d just stayed hidden, and watched as the center of his world was ripped apart. It was his fault. He blamed the shinigami because it was easy to do so. But, at bottom, he hadn’t lifted a finger to help either, and he’d been right there the whole time. He’d loved his grandfather, and so _his_ failure was even worse than that of those who’d merely been assigned to watch him. How could it be otherwise?

And his mother—he hadn’t been able to help her, either. The sickness seemed so sudden in his memory. The way she’d just collapsed; and then, months after, the way she was simply _gone_. 

His posture slackened; he hunched over. It felt like he couldn’t even hold his spine straight anymore. 

In the end, he’d even lost his father. Not to death. Only to irreconcilable divergence. But it was still a wound in him, one he could not quite heal. His foundation: cracked, ruptured, then split in twain. The tension in his frame shook him, little quaking shudders, and Uryū tried to remember to breathe. 

“So you’re afraid to love anyone else.”

He closed his eyes, and nodded, just slightly. 

“But you can’t stop it.”

Uryū expelled his breath in a dry, bitter laugh. “Of course not.” If he were stronger, he’d be able to live the way he was supposed to—he’d be capable of sustaining himself on his principles, of doing what was right without regard to how difficult it was, of letting the wounds in his soul scab over and heal. But he could not. He lacked the resolve. 

He could not keep himself from reaching for them. For his friends at Urahara Shop, who’d given him a place to live full of warmth and kindness. For Rukia, who had turned his world upside-down, and taught him that he could see past his hate—that he was a better man when he did. For Karin, in whom he saw too many pieces of himself. For Yuzu, who gave so generously that he forgot to refuse. 

He should turn himself away, before he loved them. Before he lost them. 

But it was far too late—and he, far too weak.

* * *

“Ishida. Stay a moment. The rest of you can go.” Fēng waved a hand dismissively.

The rest of the class filed out, one more day of hakuda training complete. Uryū remained where he was, standing with his arms folded behind his back. Fēng’s classroom had a much more enforced air of formality about it than any of the other practica instructors bothered with, but something about the mandatory solemnity also made it easier to focus. Or so it seemed to him, anyway. 

He was about to ask her exactly why she wanted him to remain behind when he got his answer. She took up a spot on the mat in front of him, unfolding her almost permanently-crossed arms and rolling her shoulders back. 

“Sensei?”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “It’s been a while since you’ve really gone all-out, hasn’t it? Don’t think I can’t tell the difference.”

He frowned. “That’s not—”

Fēng’s eyes narrowed. “I know what you’re doing, and it makes sense. Letting your opponent get a few blows in helps them learn. But as your instructor, my duty is to help _you_ learn. Since the regular class isn’t doing that anymore, I will have to change my methods.”

Uryū released his arms, letting them drop to his sides. They bowed to each other, and settled back into ready stances. She gestured for him to attack first, a short quirk of her fingers. 

He responded defensively. Fēng was a master of the art, and while he might be handily better than the rest of his class, he was _not_ better than her, and he knew it. So it seemed best to test the water cautiously. 

Keeping his guard up, Uryū strafed in quickly, aiming a fist for her ribcage, just under her elbows. His hit rebounded off her forearm—she’d moved so quickly he almost didn’t see it. 

Fēng did not waste time testing the waters; before he was rightly prepared for it, she’d launched into a flurry of short, sharp jabs. He had to hurry to block them all, and the kick at the end sent him skidding backwards several feet. He’d only _just_ been able to put his arms between her foot and the center of his chest. The impact stung several seconds afterwards—he would almost certainly bruise. 

Recovery time was short, however, because she pressed forward. He caught her next kick, twisting his grip to bring her to the floor. She simply twisted with him, however, jumping and bringing her other leg up and over, forcing him to let go or take a knee. The latter would be suicide in such a match, so he released her, using the dead time to strike for her shoulder. 

She turned it aside with an open palm, her strength remarkable for someone of her diminutive size. Launching herself into a back handspring, she nearly caught him on the jaw with the arc of her heel. He had to bend backwards, and even then he felt the whisper of air as it passed by. 

Slowly, she pushed him into ever more athletic, acrobatic maneuvers, and before ten minutes had passed, they were using the whole dojo, including the walls and ceiling. He found himself wishing for a space more like one of Urahara’s underground training facilities, but the tighter quarters were a strategic challenge of their own. 

Fēng caught him on one of their high-speed passes, planting both feet on his chest from a handstand and shoving, tossing him easily back into the wall. He hit with a heavy thud, all the breath rushing from his lungs. Rolling sideways to avoid the punch that followed, he swept his leg out towards her feet.

She jumped, twisted herself midair, and landed a kick right across his jaw. Uryū toppled sideways, surprised it hadn’t broken. 

Not that it didn’t _feel_ broken. Because it did. 

“You should have redirected that one, not tried to block,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. The activity of their spar had pulled several hairs loose from her braid, and there was a very fine sheen of sweat on her arms and face. Comparatively, though, her breath was steady, and he’d only really managed to deal her a few glancing blows. 

“When your opponent is stronger, the soft arts are better. You know that.”

He did—it was just sometimes difficult to remember to apply them in the middle of a high-speed spar. Uryū declined to say that, though—Fēng was not the sort of woman who accepted excuses. 

“How are they?”

Uryū blinked. “Who?”

She snorted. “Those two knuckleheads who taught you hakuda. You think I wouldn’t recognize Yoruichi-san and that nuisance Kisuke? They’re all over your movements.” 

It might have been obvious to her, but he was genuinely surprised. “How long have you known?” 

She rolled her eyes. “Day one, Ishida. I’m the one who taught _them_ hakuda. You don't forget students like those two, no matter how long you live.”

“They’re… they’re doing well, I think. Aren't they always?” It was difficult to imagine either of them in genuine distress. Certainly he had never seen it. 

“Hmph.” She nodded curtly. “That sounds about right.” She paused. “Same time tomorrow. Remember your tactics before then.”

“Yes, sensei.”

* * *

“You always land on her side of the world first.”

Uryū considered that. “I suppose it’s because I’m most familiar with that part. Yours is new.”

The spirit shook its head. “No it’s not. I’m older than she is.” 

It wore the general shape of a man today, rather than a child. Actually—its dimensions were a perfect match for his own. Uryū turned himself to face it directly, finding its eyes right at the level of his. “How could you be? I only received an asauchi almost a year ago.” 

“No. I am older. Becoming your sword gave me shape, but I was always here. I was always part of you.”

It seemed… more certain, than it had been before. About anything. 

“You… you know what you are now. You know your name.” Uryū tilted his head to the side; the spirit mirrored the motion exactly. 

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me?”

It blinked at him. “Only if you tell me something, first.”

There was a long pause; the spirit’s eyes shifted so that it was looking over his shoulder, into the light. “If she woke up, would you reject me?”

Uryū turned so that he was looking out as well. Lucia, still in the same spot, slumbered as she had been for nearly three years. It ached, sometimes, how much he missed his Quincy powers. It felt like part of himself was missing. Like he’d failed, somehow, to be what he should be. He’d lost his power, and he wondered if he hadn’t lost some of his strength with it, for all he’d been able to see in himself lately was weakness. Of will. Of resolve. Wasn’t it a sign of the same, that he’d had to come here at all, to learn the arts of people he still sometimes thought of as enemies?

But… 

“No.” He reversed direction to regard it carefully. 

Uryū pulled in a breath. To even say this was going to take more out of him than he thought he had, but… the truth was staring him in the face, and he could not deny it. Part of him didn’t want to, anymore. 

“She is… an important part of who I am. In my best moments, I am strong like she is. I can shoulder things on behalf of others, stand on my own. I’m unashamed to be what I am, and I don’t care who thinks what of that. That’s my pride, and I’ll never give it up.”

He paused. “But… sometimes I am weak. Perhaps more often than not.” He lifted his eyes to meet the spirit’s. “There are things in this world that I need, that I can’t do without. There are things that I’m afraid of. Things I’m ashamed of. Things that I rely on. Times I can’t stand by myself. Parts of me that I feel the need to… to hide.”

His weaknesses. His doubts. His feelings of inadequacy. His emotions. His bonds. All could be used to exploit him, to lay him low. Beneath it all was the unbearable fear of loss. But they didn’t all have to run together. 

“I’ve tried to avoid those things. To reject them. To be my best self all the time, the one that needs nothing. But though it might be better if I could… I can’t live on pride alone. And so…” 

He sighed deeply. “I have to see if there is anything in my weakness that can be turned into strength. I have to learn to do what others have already done—to let the fact that there are people I could not stand to lose make me stronger, instead of weaker.” Softness did not have to be weakness. Softness could be strength, just like it was in hakuda. When the enemy was more powerful—meet that force with something different. 

Yield. Bend. A rigid branch snapped under the same pressure that a sapling would spring back from easily. Silk could be stronger than iron, if utilized properly. 

“And why must you have strength?”

Uryū swallowed. “So that I may also have weakness.” He already did. He always would. And it was just as much a part of him as the rest. 

“I don’t want to pretend anymore. I don’t want to keep second-guessing my friendships, or trying to keep everyone in my life at arms’ length. I want to be allowed to care. I want to let them in. But I have to know… I _have_ to be able to do better this time.” 

The spirit smiled.

* * *

“Last day, huh? You really cut it close, Uryū.” Karin walked next to him in the hallway, her hands laced behind her head. 

“It isn’t as though either of you have registered yet,” he pointed out. 

It was true; they hadn’t. Yuzu hadn’t even decided until today that she wanted to, so he could understand that, but Karin had known she’d be taking the exams for the better part of a month; she properly should have done this already. 

“Yeah, well… I was just waiting for you guys to catch up.” She looked away, as though the wall of the corridor was suddenly interesting somehow. 

He smiled to himself, but made no comment. 

The door to the small classroom was already open, currently manned by a bored-looking administrative assistant, but when she saw the three of them enter, she stood quickly. 

“Can I help you?” 

“We’re here to register for the graduation exams,” Uryū said. 

“Oh. Well… just one moment.” Nodding, she opened a door behind her and disappeared into another room. When she returned, Ōnabara was with her. 

He seemed unsurprised to see the twins, but when his eyes fell on Uryū, he frowned slightly. “Taking the graduation exam before the completion of sixth year requires a shikai, Ishida-kun.” He folded his arms into his sleeves. 

“That will not be a problem.” Uryū pushed his glasses up his face. 

Ōnabara’s brows hiked upwards, and he blinked. “Well, if that is the case, I will have to ask you to demonstrate, as none of your instructors have reported to me that you’ve yet released your zanpakutō.” Rather than disbelieving Uryū’s implication, Ōnabara seemed curious about it.

“If you wish, sensei.”

“Will you need a larger area, or can you complete the release in here?”

“Here is fine.”

Ōnabara inclined his head, then took a step back. The twins obligingly moved to the side of the room. Uryū drew his wakizashi with little ceremony, feeling the distinct little pulse of energy under his fingers—the spirit was not hiding from him now. Bringing his right hand to join his left on the tsuka, Uryū made sure he had a firm grip on it with both. It was probably better not to mention that he’d almost taken off a few toes last time he did this. 

“ _Tachikomero, Yorugen_.”

The words slid off his tongue more easily than he’d expected—they were, after all, a shinigami’s words. But such distinctions were not his, anymore. He had to acknowledge both halves of himself. He was formed of dichotomies, and as much as it might be simpler to be only one thing, he could not.

And he no longer wanted to. 

The wakizashi’s blade seemed to waver at the edges, blurring in his vision. Shifting his hands, he slowly pulled them apart, and the sword went with him in both directions. The blade turned black in a languid ripple—as though someone had dropped ink at the base which gradually bled along the length of it to the point. Its shape changed, too, thickening and extending, the guards growing more elaborate and the shape more exotic. The very end reversed directions, curling back in towards him, and then the whole blade finally split in half, so that he was holding a sword in each hand. 

“Shuang gō,” Ōnabara remarked. “Hook swords. That’s interesting. Any idea what type they are?”

Uryū shook his head. “He only gave me his name this morning.”

“Understandable.” Ōnabara nodded, then looked up to include the other two in the conversation. “I’ll register all three of you. There’s a meeting on the last day of the month where the exams will be explained in more detail. You would do well to attend.”

* * *

Yuzu couldn’t wipe the smile off her face as she, Karin, and Uryū sat down in the lecture hall. It was filled nearly to the brim with students taking the graduation exams, most of them sixth-years. Even the obvious scrutiny that the three of them drew—not to mention the unsubtle whispering—could not dim her enthusiasm. 

They were going to do this. Together. 

It just seemed right. They’d all joined up on the day of the entrance exams, and they’d been living and training together ever since. To her, it only made sense that they should end this part of their journey side by side as well. 

Though she’d been doubting her decision to take the exams, Uryū reaching shikai had been the last little boost she needed. It seemed too much like fate to avoid now, and she knew that she’d never do better in these exams than she would with her sister and their best friend by her side.

“All right, all right, settle down.” Ōnabara stood at the front of the classroom, reassuringly the same as ever. 

Yuzu relaxed a little more into her seat. 

“You’re all here because you’ve registered to take the graduation exams. This meeting is so we can give you a little more information about the format of those exams, and what you can expect.” 

Several other teachers were arrayed behind him, among them all of the first years’ practicum instructors and several more Yuzu didn’t know—maybe the ones who taught the older students. 

“First, you should know that there will be written exams in every subject area offered by the academy. You may elect to take as few or as many of them as you like, but remember that the more competencies you can demonstrate, the more likely you will be to earn a good posting in a squad or branch of the armed forces suited to your talents.” 

Several students scribbled furiously—Yuzu took notes too, but at a calmer pace. 

“After the written exams, there will be practica for each of the shinigami arts. Some of these assessments will work much like traditional classroom exams: your instructors will have you perform certain tasks, and grade your ability to meet the demand. However.” He paused, waiting until he had all the attention in the room before continuing. “One aspect of every practicum will be public, and you will have an audience. Traditionally, our public assessments are attended by a captain or vice-captain from every division of the Gotei 13, as well as either the Grand Kidō Chief or Vice Kidō Chief. This is your chance to earn yourself some attention; it is imperative that you perform to your highest standards during these examinations.”

Yuzu felt her stomach drop to her feet. _Public_ assessment? In front of _captains_? She swallowed thickly. 

Ōnabara ceded the floor to Yanagi-sensei. The old man was smiling as amiably as ever, moving into the middle of the lecture well with an obvious spring in his step. 

“Good afternoon, everyone.” He bobbed his head a few times when several scattered return greetings emerged from the crowd. “The hohō exams are rather straightforward, really. The basic tests will just be measurements of how fast and far you _shūnpo_ , your long-jump distance, that sort of thing. Nothing to worry about. The public portion is an obstacle course. We usually send you through that in groups of three or four. There are a couple little tricks, but nothing you won’t be able to figure out, I’m sure.” 

Yuzu thought there was something a little suspicious about the way he said that, but she was more concerned about the speed trials. And dreading them already. 

A young woman, apparently the zanjutsu instructor for the sixth-years, told them that they’d be assessed on their kata, and then matched up with opponents of similar skill for public sparring matches. The idea of fighting a sixth year was hardly appealing, but _similar skill_ sounded promising; Yuzu had no idea what she’d do if she had to spar Karin or Uryū.

Hakuda would work almost identically to zanjutsu. 

“Eh. All you have to do for the public portion of the kidō exam is know your limitations,” Kozu said, shrugging. “We’re going to be asking each of you for a list of all the kidō you can do, which ones you think you can manage without incantation, and any other special skills you might have. I’ll call the name of a few of the spells on the list, and you hit targets. Just like class.”

Yuzu frowned at her notebook for a moment, then wrote a line beneath the exam description. _Kidō list_. She’d need to think carefully about what to put on it. Too ambitious, and she’d mess up. Not ambitious enough, and she might not make up for her less-than-stellar subject areas.

“For those of you with a cumulative exam score that places you in the top twenty students in the graduating class, the exams will conclude with interviews, in which the officers who were present for the exams may choose to speak with you directly, should they believe you might fit their division or branch. I must impress upon you that the interviews are a privilege, and in no way a guarantee of your choice of post.” Ōnabara frowned. 

“One week after the interviews have concluded, everyone will send offers to those students they wish to retain for their divisions. Those students who receive more than one offer are given three days to decide which to accept, and then the rest of you will be assigned to your divisions based on the need for personnel.” He paused a moment. “It is worth noting that some divisions in the Gotei 13 are unlikely to accept any new members this year, as they are running at reduced capacity.” 

Yuzu had a feeling she knew which divisions those were. She grimaced. 

“As of now,” Ōnabara concluded, “You have one month until your examinations. I recommend you spend that month in preparation. You are dismissed.”

* * *

Karin was pretty sure she’d never sweated this much in her life. 

Summer was pretty hot here, though, and as many hours as they’d been outside… well, the shade of the tree was welcome. 

It’d been pretty much nonstop training for her, Yuzu, and Uryū since that meeting where Ōnabara had basically scared the pants off all the sixth years by implying that if they didn’t do well, they’d end up doing laundry in the Fourth for the rest of their lives. Being the only first-years trying to graduate, there was no way they could let themselves get left behind. 

All of them were trying to develop their shikai as much as possible, of course, but there was plenty of academic cramming and all kinds of other practice to be doing, too. Yuzu had shaved half a second off her hundred-meter _shūnpo_ time already. Karin could now reliably cast _Shitotsu Sansen_ without incantation, though it wasn’t as strong as she’d like it to be. Still, it was way above benchmark for passing, which was good. 

Sugitani and Shinjirō, who also had year-end exams to worry about, had nevertheless agreed to help them train as much as possible. She supposed it was just as good for them, fighting against shikai and stuff, so it all kind of worked out. 

Everyone was pretty much wiped at the moment, though. Shinjirō had scarfed his food and was now napping under the tree. Uryū and Yuzu had their heads bent over a textbook, using the respite from the physical stuff to compare notes on kidō theory or something. Sugitani had his back planted against the tree trunk, arms folded into his sleeves. He looked to be staring into the middle distance, but Karin had this impression that he was… guarding them, somehow. 

It was weird, but she didn’t bug him about it. Wasn’t like it bothered her. 

Actually, it was hearing him shift that alerted her to the fact that something had changed. Sugitani lifted his head, eyes fixed on a point in the distance. She turned to follow his line of sight, taking her hand out of the picnic basket she’d been rummaging around in. 

It didn’t take long for her to spot the problem: Moribito was heading their way. Scowling, Karin stood up, crossing her arms over her chest. She saw Uryū’s eyes narrow—but Yuzu looked thoughtful for a moment. 

Moribito stopped a significant distance from their spot, shifting his weight from one leg to another. He looked like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with his hands, or his eyes, for that matter. 

“What do you want?” Karin wasn’t inclined to waste time waiting for him to decide. 

The first traces of a frown settled over his face before fading again. His shoulders lifted as he took in a deep breath. “I wanted to say… sorry.”

“What?” Karin couldn’t believe her ears.

Moribito shook his head. “I’m not…” he paused. “It’s hard to explain. I don’t know exactly what I think about all of this yet, but what Fujita’s doing—just hating you on principle—I think she’s wrong. And I’ve been…” 

“A complete asshole to all of us?”

He did frown, then, but not at her exactly. “Yes. I thought about what you said—” he looked at Yuzu— “and how hard all of you worked here, what you were able to do. If… if everyone was right and you weren’t supposed to be here, then I don’t think you’d have been able to do all that, with us against you like we were.” 

He looked down at his feet, shook his head again, and then slowly inclined himself at the waist. “I am sorry, for deciding what you were like without knowing you.”

Karin’s hands tightened on her arms where she gripped them. She wasn’t exactly sure what to say to that. It was good that he knew he’d fucked up, but that didn’t make it all just disappear like it never happened. 

From the corner of her eye, she saw Yuzu reach into the picnic basket, stand, and walk over to Moribito. 

“Raise your head, please,” she said quietly. 

He straightened, his expression perplexed. 

“I think it’s good that you can admit what you don’t know.” Yuzu smiled. “You don’t have to accept us for no reason. You saw us as a danger to your world. I think that you wanted to protect it, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that much. But… I hope that next time, you’ll let yourself be unsure _before_ you decide how to act, and not after.” 

Extending her hand forward, she offered him the object in it. “Would you like a cookie?”

He blinked. “A what?”

Karin had forgotten they didn’t actually have those here. Yuzu made them all the time, because getting the ingredients was no problem, but no place in Soul Society _sold_ them.

“A cookie,” she repeated. “They’re a type of sweet. I think you might like it.”

Still looking very confused—probably about the fact that he wasn’t getting the most vicious tongue-lashing of his life—Moribito accepted the offering. 

“I… thank you.”

“It’s no problem,” Yuzu said. “Just… promise me you’ll keep an open mind in the future, and we’ll put the rest of this behind us, right?” She glanced back over her shoulder to the others. 

Uryū nodded. Karin shrugged—it wouldn’t have been the way she handled it, but she didn’t really care. If Yuzu figured this was the way to go about things, then fair enough. Sugitani just tipped his head to the side, a calculating look on his face. 

“Good then.” Yuzu nodded firmly. “But if you’ll excuse us, Moribito-san, we should probably get back to practicing.”

“I…of course, Kurosaki-san.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Yorugen_ – 夜幻 – “Night Phantom/Vision.” Uryū’s zanpakutō. It takes the form of dual hook swords, both of them black throughout. Its type is unknown, but the release command is _tachikomero_ (立ち込めろ), the imperative form of “to enshroud.” I like this one because that can have a couple of different connotations. Obviously, enshrouding can imply hiding or concealing, but if the cloak is beneficial, it can also be a form of protection. One also enshrouds a dead body, in some cultures, so it could be implying that his enemies are as good as dead already. Words are fun. 
> 
> _Shuang gō_ – 钩 – Some Mandarin for the dictionary this time. Anyway, this is one name for Chinese hook swords. They can also be called _hu tou gou_ (tiger head hooks), or _qian kun ri yue dao_ (Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon swords). The blades are fairly thick, traditionally wielded in pairs, and have a unique shape including hooked ends and crescent shaped guards that rest in front of the fingers. The hook is good for catching and redirecting other weapons, and the swords are extremely effective in a pair, because of the ways they can be combined. Since duality and hard/rigid vs. soft/flexible strength are prominent themes in Uryū’s character arc, I thought they fit well. Plus, more than one canonical zanpakutō is not Japanese in origin. 
> 
> _Shitotsu Sansen_ – 嘴突三閃 – “Beak-Piercing Triple Beam.” Bakudō #30. Generating a burst of crackling yellow energy in a palm, the practitioner uses it to draw an inverted yellow triangle, which generates solidified energy in the shape of smaller triangles from its three points. The smaller triangles fire and hit the intended target, pinning them against a nearby surface.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Whew! And the last shikai is in! I had a ton of fun exploring themes and creating those, let me tell you. Fairly obviously, next chapter will cover exams and (le gasp!) job interviews. Which are probably just as uncomfortable for shinigami as the rest of us.
> 
> Totally accepting guesses on who is going to what division/branch, though.


	11. July

Karin scowled down at the paper, shaking her hand out. Next to her, Yuzu was still writing in neat, crisp strokes—Uryū on her other side didn’t show any sign of slowing down, either. With a huff, Karin blew a strand of hair from her face and rotated her wrist. She had a feeling she was pressing too hard on the paper, but there was a certain weird, frantic energy to the exams; even the pen-and-paper ones, apparently. 

_What are the first five dicta of the Central 46?_

Hm. Well, she knew that one, at least. Karin numbered herself a list, scrawling in the answers with confidence. 

_1\. The ultimate law is to maintain balance._

_2\. It is forbidden for shinigami to intervene in the affairs of Hell._

_3\. It is against the law for the military to meddle in the affairs of the noble families unless the family in question breaks one of the laws of Soul Society beyond a shadow of a doubt._

_4\. It is against the law to commit terrorist actions or attempt to overthrow the balance of Soul Society. To do so is treason._

_5\. It is against the law for any citizen of Soul Society to create weapons of a dangerous nature not sanctioned by the feudal government. To do so is treason._

Karin thought it was pretty telling that the dictum against _murder_ didn’t even crack the top five. It barely made the top ten, for that matter. She shook her head slightly, making her way down the page to the next question. 

_In what year was Shin’ō Academy founded, and under what name?_

She suppressed a groan.

* * *

“How do you think you did?” Yuzu bit off a chunk of rice ball, glancing between the other two. 

The mood in the mess hall was… _tense_ , she would say. Though that was likely an understatement. Students were clustered into tight-knit groups, moreso than usual, as though they were protecting themselves from each other. Or trying to hold everything together, maybe. The written exams had just concluded, but the process was far from complete. She, Karin, and Uryū had between them taken every conceivable subject area test—though Karin had elected to drop a couple more than the other two had. Yuzu supposed that might be wise—she herself had felt a little stretched thin by all the studying they’d had to do. 

“Eh. I’ll be fine. Not fantastic, but fine.” Karin lifted her shoulders, then tucked into her soba with determination. 

Uryū paused in the act of lifting the spoon from his miso soup. “I believe my scores will be adequate,” he said mildly. 

Yuzu smiled, keenly aware that such a statement probably meant he’d aced everything. Or at least, it had at midterms. These tests were a lot harder, but still. All the studying they’d done as a group probably meant they’d do pretty well, whether they felt that way on the day or not. 

For Yuzu, this was the easy part. The difficult part would be the practica. “Have you seen the assignments for the rest yet?” She asked, lifting the rice ball to her mouth again. 

From between his shitagi and kosode, Uryū produced a loose piece of notebook paper, handing it over to her. “I took the liberty of writing down both of your assignments as well,” he said.

Yuzu unfolded the paper at the crease, smoothing it onto the table in front of them. Karin leaned sideways to look, too, propping her chin on Yuzu’s shoulder. It looked like the three of them were last or close to it for everything. Maybe because they were first years?

“All the students without shikai go first,” Uryū said, pointing to a spot at the top of the page where he’d written six names. “These are the only students who have one.” 

In addition to themselves, it looked like one fifth year and two sixth-years were taking the exam with a shikai. 

“I didn’t think there would be so few…”

“Huh. Guess we’re kind of a big deal, aren’t we?” Karin didn’t seem to find it quite as odd as Yuzu did, though. “Who’s your zanjutsu match?”

“I don’t know. Someone named Nakamura. I don’t recognize the people you two are getting, either.” She supposed they had to be good, though—Karin and Uryū were both impressive swordfighters. None of them were matched against each other for hakuda either, thankfully, although…

“It looks like we’re all on the obstacle course at the same time.” She didn’t relish racing the two of them in the slightest. 

“At least no one’ll try to trip us,” Karin muttered. 

Yuzu blinked. “You think someone would?”

“All I’m saying is, be careful in your matches. You never know.” Karin looked pointedly at Uryū.

Yuzu wished she didn’t understand what her sister was implying, but she did. “Got it.”

* * *

They’d set up a larger outdoor ring for the public examinations. While Renji had already run him through all his kata, this was the part of the test that really mattered. 

His opponent was one of the students from class one of the sixth year; someone named Harada. They didn’t really list anything more than that. The requirement was that zanpakutō remain sealed, to even out the field and test for actual competence at zanjustu. Uryū couldn’t help but think there was still something unfair about the rule; people like Yuzu, who had only a tantō in sealed form, were at a distinct disadvantage to those with more reach. 

Such as, apparently, Harada, who met him at the entrance to the ring. The other man had a nodachi slung over his back—Uryū was going to have trouble getting close if he was as good as a sixth-year should be. 

But there wasn’t a lot of time to think about it; both of them were ushered through the door into the ring shortly thereafter. It was fairly typical of such areas—not that different from the one Rukia had shown him at the thirteenth. The ground beneath them was hard-packed dirt, clear of any obstacles. This was, apparently, really meant to be a contest only of crossed swords. _Shunpō_ and other advanced movement techniques were disallowed, and of course no kidō could be cast. 

For Uryū, the biggest handicap was the rule against hakuda, though—without being able to integrate it, the disadvantage of reach become greater still.

 _So turn it against him_. 

Yorugen’s voice broke into his thoughts, and he blinked. That was… a fair point, he supposed, though the _how_ wasn’t half so simple as the _what_. 

He and Harada reached the center of the ring, turning to face those assembled. Uryū swept his eyes over the faces; there were indeed many shinigami officers present, as well as all the teachers and no small number of students. He picked out Sugitani and Abe in the crowd briefly, but most of his attention was on the sheer number of white haori in the front row. 

They looked to be in numerical order; he vaguely recognized the man with the mustache from Rukia’s execution. Then there was the woman Yoruichi had fought; some relative of Fēng-sensei’s, he believed. Kira was in the third seat, hands folded neatly on the table in front of him. He knew Unohana-taichō; she looked as serene as usual. The fifth chair was conspicuously empty. Byakuya Kuchiki, face unreadable, occupied the one to the right of it. After him was a massive man with a helmet. Kyōraku’s vice-captain Ise-san sat primly next to him, dwarfed by his massive size, and beside her was Hisagi. The tattooed man nodded briefly at Uryū. The diminutive captain of the Tenth was resting his chin in his hand, but his eyes were sharp. Next to him sat a man with a jagged grin and an eyepatch… who had a small child on his shoulder? Uryū wasn’t sure what to make of that. A delicate-looking woman with a sheaf of paper in front of her sat in the twelfth seat—he had no idea who she was supposed to be. 

Perhaps due to the lack of a vice-captain in his division, Ukitake-taichō occupied the second-to-last spot on the row; he looked well enough at the moment, though. Next to him was a woman in a purple robe with a high collar. The Grand Kidō Chief, Uryū presumed. 

It was certainly an assemblage of notable persons. 

“Examinees Harada, Shunsuke, of the sixth year, first class, and Ishida, Uryū, of the first year, first class.” The exam proctor called their names in a brisk, efficient tone. 

As instructed, they presented themselves first to the audience, bowing simultaneously, and then to one another. Taking up a spot about five feet from his opponent, Uryū bowed again. Harada returned it; each of them settled back into his preferred stance, hands at the tsuka of their blades. 

Uryū drew from the waist—Harada, on the other hand, had such a long sword that he had to draw from his back. That would cost him a few seconds of time. Uryū would have to utilize the gap effectively. 

“The first to three points is the winner. Begin.”

Uryū drew and lunged in the same motion—one he’d practiced with Karin so many times it was automatic. Yorugen, of course, possessed no cutting edge at the moment, blunted intentionally due to the exercise. So when his hit landed against Harada’s ribcage, it did not actually do him significant harm. 

The proctor raised the white flag on Uryū’s side, and her assistant flipped the scorecard accordingly. Harada finished drawing his sword, and they both faced each other again, resetting their distance. 

This was where things would become more difficult—from the drawn position, Harada’s nodachi could use its reach to full advantage, with no need to be worried about a slow start. When the signal for the second pass came, Uryū had to swiftly backstep to avoid Harada’s blow. The next was quicker, and he raised Yorugen to block, metal clanging on metal. 

Ducking into the side, Uryū slashed horizontally. But inches before contact, the nodachi struck him on the shoulder. He’d failed to anticipate the speed with which Harada could swing.

Resetting for the second time, he resolved not to make the error again. Harada was talented, and the third pass lasted much longer than the first two. Without _shunpō_ or hakuda at his disposal, Uryū’s options were limited, but he kept himself mobile and fluid as much as possible. Harada’s blade swept past his arm; Uryū tucked in his elbow and took a hard step forward, thrusting Yorugen at his opponent’s chest. 

The hit lacked force, but it was a hit, and the white flag went up. He stepped back, studying Harada as the other man did the same. 

_Think. Your options are few, but even without reach, or shunpō, or hakuda, what do you have that he does not_?

His eyes narrowed. The same things he’d always had—and a few he’d just gained.

On the next pass, Uryū didn’t try to get a hit immediately. Instead, he lingered deliberately right at the edge of Harada’s reach, letting the other man swing at him within the optimal range of the nodachi. Uryū himself used Yorugen only to block or turn aside the incoming sword, attempting no strikes of his own. 

Gradually, very gradually, he started to slow down—timing his blocks so that they were just barely on time, flirting carefully with the edges of disaster. Outwardly, he showed signs of fatigue, as though the constant blocking and dodging were wearing him down. In response, Harada grew progressively less careful—it wasn’t too long before he was swinging like he expected to end the match with any single blow. 

When it became clear that his opponent was no longer planning more than a step in advance, Uryū sprung the trap. Harada telegraphed an incoming vertical slice so obviously it could probably be seen from space, and that was the cue. Uryū burst into motion, blocking and redirecting the hit in a swift twisting motion that pulled Harada slightly off-balance. Stepping in before the other man could recover, he swept Yorugen up, hitting Harada at center mass. 

The white flag rose, and raucous cheering went up from the crowd—or at least parts of it. The proctor called the match, and both Uryū and Harada bowed one final time before exiting. Several of the captains and vice-captains were taking down notes; Ukitake was outright smiling, as though amused by something.

While leaving the area all together was certainly an option, Uryū elected to enter the stands instead. Yuzu’s match had taken place while he was preparing for his own, but Karin’s was next, the last zanjutsu trial for the day. 

Abe waved him over once he’d climbed the stands a bit. Uryū nodded and picked his way over to him and Sugitani. Yuzu was between them now, though he hadn’t seen her earlier. Probably due to her size. 

“That was great, Uryū,” she said, beaming up at him. 

“How did your match go, Yuzu?”

She shrugged. “I lost by a point, but it wasn’t too bad, I think.”

“It wasn’t.” Sugitani crossed his arms. “Her opponent was very good, and had considerable advantage. She acquitted herself well.”

Uryū hadn’t expected any less, and he told her so. Yuzu colored a bit, but her smile remained in place. They settled down for the last match, and that was when Karin and her opponent, a woman with brown hair in a short bob, entered together. 

“That’s Saitō,” Abe said. “The fifth year. Apparently, she’s a zanjutsu specialist.”

Uryū blinked. That might be why this bout was last on the docket. Two people with early shikai and acknowledged skill in zanjutsu. They were, in a way, direct competition. Though he didn’t think he’d call Karin a specialist—her other skills were all above par, as well. 

“Examinees Saitō, Haruka, fifth year second class, and Kurosaki, Karin, first year first class.” 

An expectant hush settled over the audience as they took their places.

Karin’s draw was a hair faster than Saitō’s— but not enough so that she landed the point immediately. Metal rasped together as they slid their blades apart, each jumping back. Saitō didn’t stay away for long, though, and she strafed swiftly forward to just inside Karin’s optimum range, knocking aside Hisaku with a well-placed blow. She recovered first, and her wakizashi scored a clean hit to Karin’s shoulder. 

Karin scowled, rolling the joint and backing up to the reset point. Her eyes narrowed, and when she lowered herself into a ready stance, she took a double-handed grip on Hisaku. 

The second exchange was even quicker than the previous one. Karin went on the offense, swinging vertically. Saitō blocked; a loud clang testified to the force behind the hit. Karin recovered first, with the unruffled calm of someone who’d been expecting things to go exactly the way they had. Whipping Hisaku around, she twisted out of the way of Saitō’s counter and hit her on the side of the abdomen, evening the score.

They were closely-matched. Uryū glanced down at the most important row of spectators. The big man with the eyepatch was leaning forward slightly, though the angle didn’t permit interpretation of his facial expression. Hitsugaya-taichō had straightened in his seat, no longer even feigning disinterest. 

But perhaps most invested of all, aside from Karin’s friends, was Renji. He sat with his fists balled up, pressed into his knees, eyes narrow and fixed on the ring below. 

The third pass stretched longest, with Saitō barely edging Karin out for the next point. On the fourth, they crashed into a deadlock, both wielding their blades two-handed, arms shaking as they pushed against one another. Uryū stiffened; Yuzu slipped her hand into his on one side and Sugitani’s on the other, squeezing anxiously. He squeezed back.

_Come on, Karin. Soft arts._

As if she’d plucked the thought right out of his head, Karin shifted her whole body, suddenly but smoothly. Unprepared for the change, Saitō half-stepped forward, exerting impressive control not to stumble. 

But in a match so close, even the split second she’d been distracted was enough—Karin’s sword rapped her hip. 

Yuzu’s hand tightened around his. A tie. The next point would decide the match. 

As they reset, Karin glanced briefly up at the stands—up at them. Uryū, unsure what to do, nodded. He believed in her. She could do it; he knew she could. 

Yuzu raised their joined hands halfway, grinning. Karin’s expression shifted until she was smiling, too. On the reset, she slid Hisaku back home into her sheath, dropping low into a crouch. 

Saitō looked confused for a moment, but kept her own zanpakutō drawn. When the signal came for them to go, Karin did not move immediately. Given her previous aggression, that was likely a bit surprising to her foe, but Saitō saw the opportunity presented and took it. She lunged with impressive form, the thud of her feet on the ground and the whistle of her blade through the air the only sounds in the entire ring. 

With whiplash speed, Karin gripped Hisaku by the hilt and drew, rising from the crouch and deflecting the incoming blow to the side in a controlled, precise maneuver. Saitō’s stance broke—Uryū knew right then it was over. In a perfect replica of the very first iaijutsu kata they’d ever learned, Karin reversed the direction of her blade. It struck Saitō diagonally across the sternum; Karin completed the form and slid Hisaku home.

The white flag went up, and the stands erupted in applause.

* * *

It was with the thrum of her zanjutsu win still in her veins that Karin arrived at the ring for her kidō exam. Earlier in the day, she’d run over her list with Kozu, who’d made sure she knew what she was getting into before the test itself. 

Now, waiting for her assessment, she could hear the characteristic fizzle of a lightning spell. She’d seen Uryū’s examination already, and he’d done really well, especially compared to some of the sixth-years. The advanced curriculum was really showing; it was easy to pick out who had been in the first class of their year and who hadn’t. 

Whoever was directly in front of her finished, and Karin made her way out to the targets. As before, she bowed to the officers present, then scanned the crowd. Her dad was here again today, but he kept himself tucked up in the back, so she couldn’t see him, exactly. Uryū was easier to find, but Yuzu wouldn’t be up there this time, since her exam was right after. 

“Examinee Kurosaki, Karin, first year first class.” Kozu was also proctoring, apparently. 

Karin glanced downfield. There were ten kidō targets set up, which suggested a maximum of ten spells. Her reiryoku could handle that, if she was careful with it. Karin had quite a bit to use, but since her control wasn’t spectacular, she tended to burn more than she should for stuff like this. 

“All right.” Kozu hopped over the line of captain’s tables and planted her feet in the dirt, crossing her arms over her chest. A piece of paper—her list, Karin realized—dangled from between two fingers. 

“Start us off with a _Shō_ , Kurosaki.”

Karin nodded, pointing at the first target downfield. “ _Hadō #1: Shō_!” 

Her aim was good, and the spell hit just slightly left of center on the target, punching a hole clean through it. 

“ _Seki_.” The second command came right on the heels of the first. 

_Seki_ was a Bakudō, but it could in theory be aimed at a target, since it was a repulsing spell.

“ _Bakudō #8: Seki_!” The blue orb shot from in front of her hand towards the second target, hitting and snapping the pole in half. 

“ _Fushibi_.” 

The commands did not stop to let her catch her breath, and it didn’t take Karin long to understand what she hadn’t quite grasped when watching Uryū take his exam: that lack of ability to reset was part of the challenge. She managed up through _Kyokkō_ without the incantations, but after that she had to chant. 

She grimaced as she felt her reiryoku draining away, seemingly faster with each new spell. But there were only a few left; they were rapidly approaching the numbers at the end of her list, and Kozu would know it better than anyone. 

“ _Midoriami_.”

Karin sucked in a deep breath. This was about the highest-level spell she could cast. Lacing her fingers together, she pushed her palms out in front of her. “ _Glorious spring, oppressive summer! Enclose all burning spirits, drag the malicious to the edge of damnation! Bakudō #42: Midoriami!_ ”

The green sphere between her palms shot forward when she released the spell, splitting and growing into a wide, pale web. Her aim was a little off, but the edge of it did catch on the target, one of the weighted ends wrapping several times around the pole. 

Karin exhaled in a rush, her shoulder slumping. She felt utterly drained, in a way that made her arms shaky. A slight dizziness built, and when she bowed to the audience, she wondered if she wasn’t about to fall over. Forcing herself back upright, she bit her tongue to keep herself alert, and climbed the stands with heavy footsteps, heedless of the applause. 

She practically fell into the seat next to Uryū. She was grateful when he steadied her with a hand, though she didn’t say so. 

“Well done,” he said, low enough that only she could hear. 

She grunted something close to agreement, shaking her head to clear it. Fortunately, the dizziness faded quickly—which was good, because Yuzu was entering now. 

Karin knew her sister well enough to detect the obvious nervousness. It was in the way she fidgeted with her hands, in the way her bow to the audience was a little unsteady. She’d worn the scarf Uryū made over her uniform, even though the colors clashed. 

“Examinee Kurosaki, Yuzuki, first year first class.” Kozu accepted a new piece of paper from one of the exam assistants. 

Karin swallowed. Somehow, she was much more nervous for Yuzu than she had been for her _own_ exam.

Kozu didn’t waste any time; Yuzu’s spells were called at about twice the speed Karin’s were, but she fired them off steadily, at a fresh set of targets. Kozu only bothered with one under-ten before skipping directly to twenty, but Yuzu managed the transition without any problem, all the way up to an _enkōsen_ with no incantation. 

That was when things broke pattern. 

“ _Hōrin_ and _Shakkahō_!” Kozu was wearing a face-splitting grin, her fingers tight around her arms. 

“And?” Karin muttered. “What does she mean, _and_?” 

“Just what she said,” Uryū replied. 

Yuzu didn’t seem confused by the command, either; she separated her hands at once. Karin saw her shoulders rise, and then fall, but she took no more than that single breath to prepare. 

“ _Disintegrate, you black dog of Rodanin_ i!” In Yuzu’s left hand appeared an orange spell, a thread of pink swirling around the outside. “ _Ye lord! Mask of blood and flesh, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man_!” A second, much larger orb, this one magenta-red, formed over her right. 

Even from this distance, Karin could see the sheen of sweat on her sister’s brow; Yuzu had never looked this determined in her life, as far as she could remember. She was focused entirely on the targets and what she was doing, oblivious to the way the crowd in turn focused just as intently on her. 

“ _Look upon yourself with horror and tear out your own throat_!” The orange spell extended, surging in a whiplike arc for the line of targets. “ _Inferno and pandemonium, the sea barrier surges, march on to the south_!” The fireball swelled until it was the size of a watermelon.

“ _Bakudō #9: Hōrin_! _Hadō #31: Shakkahō_!” The fireball released at the same time as the whip finally hit, winding around the pole of the next target in line. Yuzu wrapped the other end around her hand and pulled, tilting the wooden rectangle directly into the path of the _shakkahō_ , which hit with a roar of flame. 

Karin’s mouth fell open. She knew Yuzu was great at kidō, but she’d had no idea she could do something like that. 

Apparently, Kozu wasn’t done, though. No sooner had the other two spells dispersed than she was calling out the next. 

“ _Raikōhō_.”

And Yuzu immediately adjusted her stance, flowing into a new form, her left hand wrapped around her right wrist, palm facing out. “ _Sprinkled on the bones of the beast! Sharp tower, red crystal, steel ring_.” Another sphere—except this one seemed less steady, already crackling at the edges with barely-contained energy. Yuzu narrowed her eyes, fixing them on the emerging spell. “ _Move and become the wind, stop and become the calm. The sound of warring spears fills the empty… castle_!”

She nearly had to grind out the last word—for a moment, Karin feared the spell would fail. It wavered dangerously, several loose bolts of electricity snapping around the surface, cloaking Yuzu in blushing yellow light. 

“ _Hadō #63: Raikōhō_!”

Yuzu released the spell—it streaked over the open field and crashed into the line of targets loudly enough that many in the audience flinched. When the smoke cleared, all the targets had been smashed down to the base of the poles. No evidence of their previous existence remained to be seen, save a few charred splinters. 

Karin glanced at Yuzu, who was frowning slightly. She wouldn’t be surprised if her sister had lost full control of the spell at some point. But she’d still managed to hit where she aimed, and clearly to the right effect. 

And obviously, Karin was not the only one that thought so. There was dead silence over the arena for several seconds, before someone—she suspected their dad—started up the applause. 

Yuzu bowed to the audience again, and took her leave.

* * *

Plopping herself down next to Karin, Yuzu pushed a few sweaty strands of hair out of her face. “How was hakuda?”

“I won, so I’m not complaining.” Karin handed her an anman. 

Yuzu unwrapped it gratefully. “Even without being able to use hohō, it really takes it out of you,” she said, biting into the confection. She’d won her own match, too, but it was a near thing. Probably due to instructor preference, the hakuda tests hadn’t had the same stop-and-go format to them. They were just… well, brawls, basically. The winner was determined by the proctor, or if one of the students went down and didn’t get up—either voluntarily or due to unconsciousness. 

Most likely, Fēng-sensei thought that was more representative of actual battle conditions, and if the other teachers were anything like her…

“Did I miss any good ones?” she asked, tilting her head up and behind her to look at Sugitani. 

He shrugged. “Some of them were very good, but as I understand it, the match everyone’s expecting the most out of is Ishida’s. Fēng matched him up with a woman who already has an offer from the Ōnmitsukidō.” 

Yuzu’s eyes went wide. Already? That surely meant she was very skilled. Then again… so was Uryū. Still, she couldn’t help but be worried for him. 

They entered. The woman carried herself smoothly, with obvious poise and confidence. The seeds of worry in Yuzu’s gut started to sprout; she pulled her lower lip between her teeth.

“Examinees Fuwa, Chikako, sixth year first class, and Ishida, Uryū, first year first class.”

The match opened abruptly; both Uryū and Fuwa took a step in and kicked high, rotating in from opposite directions. Their legs met in the middle, and both immediately dropped the contact. Fuwa moved in first, raining a quick series of heavy jabs at Uryū’s midsection. He backed up as she went forward, turning them all aside with his open palms. 

When she drew back for a more forceful thrust, he stepped in, catching her wrist and pushing it upwards, twisting his body around for another kick, this one aimed for the side of her head. She bent almost impossibly, and his foot sailed over her by a handful of inches. Fuwa caught him in the sternum with her free hand, forcing him to release her. 

He jumped back; she pursued. Her roundhouse kick slammed into his forearm block, and he dropped low, trying for a leg sweep. She jumped over it, but he just barely caught her ankle, enough to make a difference, and she had to abort her attempt to punch him, catching herself on the mat with both hands and springing out of the way before he could take advantage. 

Yuzu’s heart was in her throat—they were moving so quickly, even without _shunpō_. What was more, though, the match had no clear favorite; though she’d guess that Fuwa was a bit more flexible and naturally quick, Uryū was both strong and clever. Both of them melded their hard and soft arts in constant adaptation to one another and the situation at hand. In contrast to those with more planted styles, both of them were highly acrobatic, just as likely to jump or flip as strafe or duck. 

Fuwa landed the last of a barrage of palm strikes, the force behind it knocking Uryū back several feet and sending him to the mat. Yuzu pulled in a gasp—she felt Karin stiffen beside her, anman forgotten in her hand. But he was up as soon as he’d landed, rolling to his feet and grabbing hold of Fuwa’s leg when she tried to kick him in the ribcage. Twisting her into a lock, he forced her to the mat in turn, her back hitting it with a _whump_. 

Uryū landed three body-blows before she recovered, kicking off the ground with enough force to move him two steps backwards. Almost immediately, she threw herself into a jumping windmill kick, and he crossed his arms above his head to block. His knees bent deeply under the impact, and he pushed back up. Rather than unbalancing her, though, it only pushed her back a bit. As soon as her feet hit the ground, Fuwa sprang forward, thrusting the heel of her hand for his jaw. 

Uryū intercepted the blow, redirecting with a twist of his whole body and throwing Fuwa over his hip. Yuzu recognized the aikido maneuver—she’d used it in her own match earlier. With another swift recovery, Fuwa was back on her feet. 

They made use of the whole ring, and neither stopped to give themselves or the other even a moment’s rest. Yuzu was beginning to feel exhausted just _watching_ them leap around. The thuds of increasingly heavy impacts resounded dully through the air, muffled only slightly by the intervening fabric of their uniforms. Both were clearly not the type to become frustrated too soon. Though Yuzu kept waiting for someone to make a mistake, she didn’t see any. Maybe someone with more expertise could spot the errors, but the competitors were even in any case. 

“Damn,” Karin murmured next to her. “They’ve got to be scoring themselves so many points right now.”

Yuzu glanced down at the row of officers. Not one of them was looking at anything but the fight, except the doll-like woman in the twelfth seat, who was the only one still writing notes. She was taking them down quickly, though, and her eyes kept moving back to the match. 

By that time, both fighters were breathing heavily, in deep, controlled gulps of air. Uryū’s glasses were slipping down his nose, from sweat or motion, it was hard to say. Fuwa’s red bun had fallen out several minutes ago— her hair was plastered to the back of her neck and cheeks.

“Thirty seconds remain.” 

The proctor’s voice surprised Yuzu; she hadn’t even known there was a time limit on the matches. Then again… it seemed like this one could go all day, if they let it. 

Uryū and Fuwa jumped apart, then made eye contact for a second. She nodded first, a gesture he returned—though Yuzu had no idea what it meant. 

Both of them rushed forward; her right arm met his left, stopping both dead. He went in for the second punch, a quick jab, but Fuwa blocked with a raised knee. Yuzu almost shouted a warning as Fuwa’s off-hand flew forward, but clamped down on it at the last second. Uryū leaned to the left, her knuckle just grazing his cheek, and got his right hand under her lifted leg. 

It was an imperfect throw—but with only one foot to balance on, Fuwa hit the mat anyway, rolling back to her feet just as the match was declared over. 

Yuzu forgot to breathe as the proctor conferred with his assistants, as well as Fēng-sensei. The discussion looked heated; at one point, Fēng turned away with a disgusted look on her face.

“The winner of the match is Fuwa.”

Applause broke out, but that didn’t prevent Yuzu from hearing Karin swear under her breath. Though she’d never say that _exact_ thing herself, she couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment. Uryū deserved to win—they’d been even for much of the match, it was true, but Yuzu thought he was just a little bit better. Plus, he’d scored the last throw. 

Down in the ring, Fuwa said something to Uryū, a look on her face that Yuzu couldn’t quite decipher. Uryū shook his head slightly, raising one shoulder. They bowed to each other a second time, and exited.

* * *

It would appear that the so-called ‘trick’ to the obstacle course for hohō was that it lay under a field of dramatically-increased reiatsu, reducing most forms of movement to little more than a crawl. Presumably, this was to make their abilities easier to study by slowing down _shunpō_ and drastically restricting the distance they could jump, even if they boosted themselves as well as possible with spirit energy. 

The obstacles, which would have been undaunting if faced under ordinary conditions, were suddenly quite the challenge. 

As promised, they’d been turned loose on the course in groups of three or four—and all the first years taking the exams were running it simultaneously. Thus far, they’d all managed to make it across a sand pit, over several hurdles, up a narrow ladder, across a balance-wire, and down the other side. They’d done it in what Uryū judged to be decent time. 

But now they were coming up on a smooth, vertical wall; and, based on the height of their jumps so far, they didn’t stand much chance of surmounting it. This was, apparently, the obstacle that most of the other examinees had elected to skip—an allowed action, though one that would cost them some unknown number of points. 

Karin, slightly ahead of him, hit the obstacle first, launching herself at it with a mighty leap. She cleared at least five feet vertically, but that still put her no more than two-thirds of the way up. Uryū grimaced; they _could_ simply go around. But that felt far too much like admitting defeat. 

The rules for the course were simple: get over as many of the obstacles as possible, in the shortest time manageable. No zanpakutō, no kidō.

Gritting her teeth, Karin jumped again, making it a few inches higher this time, her fingers sliding against the smooth surface of the wall and finding no purchase. There was none. 

Uryū tried as well, to no better results. If he could still use _hirenkyaku_ … but he didn’t have the time to be thinking of what he did not have. 

So what _did_ he have? 

Quickly, he considered their surroundings. The obstacles were all contained; no extra debris or any such things were left laying around. The ground beneath them was flat—no slopes for additional speed. Karin was still jumping, growing more frustrated if her growling was anything to go by. Yuzu just now approached from behind. 

That was it. 

“Karin!” he said, tone urgent. “Help me boost Yuzu up the wall!”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “What?”

“Help me boost Yuzu.”

“Are you crazy? The proctor said—”

“No kidō and no zanpakutō. No one said anything about teamwork.” It might be a technicality, but if it was going to get them over this wall, Uryū didn’t care. They’d have teammates in real-world situations, too.

It took a second, but then she grinned. “You got it.”

They moved together, stacking all four of their combined hands. Yuzu, catching on quickly, backed up a dozen paces and approached at a run. The minute she stepped into his palm, Uryū used his reiatsu to fling her as powerfully as he was able. Karin beside him did the same, and combined with Yuzu’s amplified jump, they sent her flying. She landed atop the wall, then turned back around, dropping onto her stomach and hanging her arms as far down as she could get them. 

Uryū turned to Karin. “You next.” 

She nodded, and he boosted her as well. They got her high enough to catch Yuzu’s arms, and their combined effort pulled her up. Karin took hold of Yuzu’s ankles, lowering her further still, and Uryū backed himself up, making a running start and putting everything behind it that he could. 

His left hand missed by a hair, but he managed to catch onto Yuzu with his right. She gripped it with both of hers, face twisted in a grimace from the effort. Planting his feet against the slick surface of the wall, Uryū tried to help them walk him up. It took a while, but eventually he, too, stood atop the obstacle. 

“I like this way better,” Karin said. “Let’s go.”

They nearly had to carry one another across the finish line, but they’d completed every obstacle on the way. 

And they’d done it together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Seki_ – 斥 – “Repulse.” A kidō spell that creates an orb of light blue energy which repulses anything it comes in contact with. Bakudō #8. 
> 
> _Fushibi_ – 伏火 – “Ambush Flare.” Generally useful concussive kidō spell. Hadō #12.
> 
>  _Kyokkō_ – 曲光 – “Bent Light.” Used to render the user or an object invisible. Also conceals reiatsu, if applicable. Bakudō #26.
> 
>  _Midoriami_ – 緑網 – “Green Net.” I totally made this one up. There were no canon kidō in the 40s for me to pick from, so this is now Bakudō #42. Generates a green kidō net with “weights” at the end, making it suitable for tripping and dragging (if the caster holds onto at least one end) as well as immobilization. 
> 
> _Raikōhō_ – 雷吼炮 – “Thunder Roar Sear.” Generates an orb of yellow lightning above the user’s palm, which can then be fired as a bolt. Highly destructive. Hadō #63.
> 
> * * *
> 
> So… those were the exams. I hope getting to see them be awesome was good payoff for watching them all struggle for the rest of the fic. Conversely, I hope they don’t seem _too_ good now. But they are very talented, especially compared to the average shinigami, and this was a very good place to make a point of that. 
> 
> Next time, we’ll get exam results, and some interviews with divisional officers and finally, the division assignments! Next chapter will be the last one for this fic (but definitely not for the story, of course). I do hope it’s been enjoyable.


	12. August

The exam results were posted, as promised, one week after the practica concluded. 

For Uryū, there was a strange sense of familiarity about it—high school in the living world had not been so different in this respect. Scores were public for all and sundry to see—though he supposed there might be a difference in the reasons for such a decision. There at least they believed there was motivation to be had; here it was merely confirmation, with a bit of aggrandizement. 

“All right, move outta the way!” Karin was clearing their path through the gathered crowd quite effectively. Most of these people hadn’t even _taken_ the exams. 

Uryū let Yuzu precede him, keeping her in sight between himself and her sister at the front. When they finally broke through the crowd, they found themselves standing in front of a large bulletin board. It looked like there was a separate posting for every academic subject and then another for each practicum. The overall results were down at the other end—they might as well start here. 

Searching through the lists, he used his comparative height to read the uppermost postings, while the girls took the middle and lower ones. Rather than attempt to all talk at once, each of them wrote down what they saw, then pushed their way further down the line. Karin got to the overall list first; Uryū worked on finding them a way out of the crowd. 

Five minutes later, they were huddled at a table in the mess, comparing lists. 

“Yuzu got a perfect score on the kidō practicum.”

“What?” Yuzu bent over Karin’s paper to confirm. “But I nearly lost the _Raikōhō_ at the end!”

“Uh, yeah, sure. But you can _cast_ a spell in the sixties. That’s not even on the curriculum, so how could you lose points for it?”

Uryū half smiled, shaking his head. “How did we do, Karin?”

“Uhhh…” she searched the list. A total of fifty-four students had taken the exams: the fifty from sixth year, Saitō from fifth year, and themselves. 

“Looks like you were seventh, and I was fifteenth. Not bad.”

It wasn’t bad at all, and that was the pattern of the results. Karin had scored top marks in zanjutsu—hardly surprising considering who her match had pitted her against. Uryū was fifth there, Yuzu nineteenth. They were second, third, and eighth in hohō—Yuzu’s solo times and distances hadn’t been quite high enough to warrant fourth, even with their obstacle run. 

“Hmph. Bet some jerk just ran the course without helping anyone and got through it quick,” Karin decided of the first-place finisher. 

Uryū shrugged. “Perhaps.” He’d suspected they might take a bit of a hit for slowing down to help each other, but it looked like the fact that they’d completed every obstacle was worth enough points to push them into the upper ranks. 

Yuzu brightened, shoving her paper towards him. “Uryū, you tied for first place in hakuda. I guess your kata were slightly better than Fuwa-san’s.” 

That surprised him somewhat. He’d chosen not to linger on what was an obvious disagreement between the exam proctor and Fēng-sensei on how to handle the matter. Fuwa herself had been quite conciliatory about it—and he respected her skill enough that he didn’t particularly mind that she’d been awarded the match. This was a more favorable outcome than he’d expected. 

He scanned the rest of the list. “And you placed sixth, Yuzu.” Karin was twentieth, a bit of a low finish for her. But considering it was her weakest subject area, it was still extremely impressive. 

Their academic scores were likewise excellent; studying had paid off for all three of them. 

“How about the cumulatives?” Yuzu asked, glancing at Karin. 

She grinned. “Check it out, you guys.” She spun her paper around on the surface of the table and slid it over so they could read.

_Cumulative Exam Results:_

_1\. Ishida, Uryū  
2\. Kurosaki, Yuzuki  
3\. Kurosaki, Karin_

“There’s no way,” Yuzu breathed, her eyes flicking back up to Karin. “Are you sure this is what it said?”

“Positive,” Karin replied. “I read it twice just to make sure.”

“B-but… how?”

Uryū considered it for a moment, scanning over the other documents. Slowly, the answer resolved itself in front of him. 

“Take a look at the individual top tens,” he said, gathering the papers together. “Notice how almost none of the names appears on more than one of them?”

“Except ours,” Karin pointed out. 

He nodded. “We have things we’re better and worse at, but we aren’t really specialists.” They’d all worked to overcome their natural deficiencies in certain subject areas, mostly by relying on extra practice and each others’ instruction. “But almost all of the other top scorers are. They did really well in the areas they decided to focus on, but…”

“Not great in the other ones,” Yuzu finished. 

There were exceptions, of course. Fuwa was ranked fourth, and a couple of the other names appeared in more than one top ten. But after that, the drop was significant. 

“I guess they didn’t have a team to train with.” Karin sounded pretty satisfied with herself.

Uryū couldn’t blame her; it was her instinct to work together that had formed their training group. And that was almost certainly the reason they’d done so well.

“Still… some of the divisions will probably care more about one test than the cumulatives.” Yuzu was frowning slightly at the zanjutsu results. 

Uryū nodded. “Which is why specializing makes sense for people with a strong preference. But you wouldn’t want to be in a division that only cares about zanjutsu anyway, would you?”

“Mm-mm.” She toyed with the end of her braid. “You know what this means, though? We have to go to interviews. With the officers. By ourselves.” Yuzu’s eyes were wide, and apprehension tinged the tone of her voice. 

“Eh. We’ll do fine. How bad could it be?”

* * *

Apparently, it could be pretty bad. 

Well, not the interview part—she hadn’t actually gotten there yet. But as much as Karin had tried to get herself to believe that this was Not a Big Deal, she couldn’t suppress the awkward turning thing her stomach was doing. 

Because, yes, maybe it was kind of a Big Deal. It was true that people transferred divisions all the time, and that which one she ended up in first didn’t necessarily determine the trajectory of her future career as a shinigami; but… it just might. Some people _did_ end up spending their lives in one division. And this—this was her first chance to actually have any control over what these officers thought of her. 

While her instinct might be to defiantly proclaim her lack of concern for other people’s opinions, it was hard to maintain that attitude when she considered how _important_ this could turn out to be for the course of her _entire life_. 

Yuzu’s anxiety was rubbing off on her. 

She felt a hand on her head and glanced up. Uryū had rested his gloved palm on her crown. He was looking straight ahead, not at her—but when he spoke, it was obviously her the words were meant for. 

“Be yourself. That way you’ll know all the offers are for _you_.” 

She was glad he didn’t put a ‘just’ in front of the ‘be yourself’ part. There was nothing _just_ or _mere_ about it. Not right now. 

But he was still right—Karin wanted to do this _her_ way. If that made things harder at points, well, she accepted that. She’d learned to bend a bit, to adapt to the situation around her. That was a good thing. But it was no use at all if she bent so far she became someone else completely. 

“Karin Kurosaki? This way, please.”

The interview room she stepped into was normally a classroom, but all the tables had been arranged so that a panel of people sat facing the door. Facing her. A large space was cleared in the middle, and she walked to the middle of it, taking up an attentive rest. Her arms were behind her back, her feet shoulder-width apart, spine straight. 

The panel was identical to the people who’d attended the practica, which wasn’t that surprising. A few of them were showing obvious signs of boredom or fatigue. The white-haired guy in the second-to-last seat looked especially exhausted, what with the heavy purplish rings under his eyes and the slight hunch to his posture. He looked really sick, actually—she wondered if he should even be here. 

She pulled her eyes away from him, inadvertently meeting Hitsugaya-taichō’s in the process. She frowned at him. He frowned right back. 

The sound of a throat clearing drew her attention further back up the row. “Kurosaki-kun,” said the man in the first seat. “I understand you’ve achieved shikai.”

There was a pause, in which Karin belatedly realized she was supposed to respond. “Uh—yeah. I did.”

She thought she saw a little smile quirk the corner of his mouth, but it was gone quickly if it had been there at all. 

“Would you be willing to release it here, so that we might observe?”

“Oh. Sure.” Karin gripped Hisaku and pulled her from her sheath. “ _Sobiero, Hisaku_.” She was a little more careful with the draw, now—the flame was suppressed. She doubted it would go over well if she accidentally hurled an attack at them. Even if it wouldn’t put them in any actual danger. 

The officers studied the sword, a few making notes on the paper in front of them. “What type is it?” asked the fukutaichō with glasses, pushing them up her nose. 

“Elemental,” Karin replied. “Fire, specifically.” 

“Do you know what its abilities are?” That came from the man in the helmet, the words half-muffled and echoing. 

“Only one so far,” she admitted. “I can draw or swing it to throw fire. It’s called _Habatake_.” 

Helmet-guy nodded, apparently satisfied. 

“Thank you for the demonstration, Kurosaki-kun.” That was first man again.

Karin felt like she could guess their names if she had to, but it was probably better not to, in case she picked the wrong one. She sheathed Hisaku, sealing the zanpakutō in the process. 

“Are there questions?” The others seemed content to allow the First Division’s officer to officiate. 

The Second Division’s taichō, Fēng-sensei’s cousin or however they were related, spoke up first. “If you were out on a mission, and your teammates were engaged with an enemy too powerful for them or you, what would you do?”

Karin paused consciously. There was a voice in the back of her head—suspiciously similar to Uryū’s—urging her to think through her answer. “Has it noticed me yet?”

The woman tilted her head to the side, eyes narrow. “No.”

“Get the drop on it, if I can.” She folded her arms behind her back. “If it’s really too powerful for us to handle, then… try and get everyone out intact and report it, I guess.” It probably wasn’t the best answer for a question from the Ōnmitsukidō’s head—they most likely used stealthier options or whatever, but Karin didn’t know those and probably wouldn’t use them even if she did. 

“Do you think there’s any acceptable reason to leave the service of the Gotei 13?” That one came from Kira, the blond guy from drinks that one time. 

“Uhh… sure. I mean, aside from just dying, people retire and stuff, right?” She shrugged. “I guess if you had a family to take care of or something, that might also be a good reason. Or if you couldn’t do your job anymore, like if you were permanently injured.” She wasn’t sure exactly what he was getting at. 

He nodded, though—while Karin didn’t take that as a sign that she’d answered _correctly_ , it at least meant she’d done so _adequately_. She shifted her weight to the left.

“It says here that you took the exams in Kidō Theory,” said the gentle-looking woman with the braid in front. “How did you find it?”

“It was all right. Some of it was pretty interesting.” Kidō wasn’t really her area—Karin let her lukewarm answer convey that by itself. 

The captain of the sixth—Rukia’s brother, apparently—declined to ask her anything. Helmet guy was next. 

“Your zanjutsu match was among the better demonstrations I have seen from an academy student,” he said. It sounded more like an observation than a compliment. “Do you have intentions to specialize?”

Karin shook her head. “Zanjutsu was probably my favorite subject. I like it a lot and I definitely intend to keep practicing. But… one thing I’ve learned here is that it’s good to know more than one way to solve a problem. I don’t want to trap myself by specializing.” She felt satisfaction from Hisaku, but the spirit did not interrupt. 

The woman with the glasses was next. “What is the most important attribute for a seated officer to possess?”

She blinked. That was quite a question. Frowning, Karin tried to decide what she thought about it. “Strength,” she said at last. “Not just the physical kind, but strength of will. Lots of people look to the officers for an idea of how to feel in a difficult situation. If that officer wavers, everyone they command will waver, too. Which seems like a really fast way to die.”

The woman wrote something down with an unreadable expression. These people were _not_ easy to get a sense of. 

“Can you write?” Hisagi asked. 

Karin’s brow furrowed. “I took the _written_ exams, fukutaichō.” 

He shook his head. “No, I mean, are you good at it? Writing essays or stories or anything like that?”

“Dunno. My essay grades were good, but I’ve never tried poetry or whatever.”

That took them to Hitsugaya-taichō, and Karin felt her posture shift before she’d even decided to do so. She had started to relax; her spine stiffened enough that all that progress was reversed instantaneously. Something about this guy… he just rubbed her the wrong way. 

He shook his head, indicating he had no question, and she had to stop herself from scowling openly. What the hell? 

Somehow—Karin didn’t know exactly _why_ —she took this as a personal affront, in a way Kuchiki’s pass had not been. Clenching her jaw, she affected boredom instead of offense, skipping right over him with her eyes and landing on the big guy. 

“Do you like to fight?” He asked it with a lopsided grin—his eyeteeth were pointed. 

Karin snorted. “Probably not as much as you, taichō, but yeah. I do.” She knew exactly who this captain was; no one got through the academy without hearing at least one crazy story about the infamous Kenpachi Zaraki of the Eleventh. 

The girl in the twelfth spot shook her head, making it the exhausted-looking man’s turn. Karin was pretty sure he was Ukitake-taichō, Rukia’s captain. 

He studied her for a moment, a pleasant expression on his face. For all his obvious fatigue, he seemed a lot more relaxed than some of the others here. “What is the most important thing to you in this world, Kurosaki-kun?” The question was quiet—but despite his slight smile, she knew it was serious. 

Karin answered immediately. “My family.” Pushing out a breath, she took in another one. “Not just the ones related to me by blood—the people who _choose_ to be my family, and the people whose family I choose to be part of.” They were the reason she’d come here—and the reason she’d gotten this far. 

It might, in some sense, be a selfish answer. Maybe what she was supposed to say was that she was here for the balance, or Soul Society, or whatever. But it was _hard_ to care about the whole world. She tried—maybe succeeded, in her better moments. But when push came to shove, she was in this for the people she loved. And if she was going to be herself in all this, that was something she had to make clear. 

Ukitake dipped his chin. 

The Grand Kidō Chief had no questions, either—and with that, her interview was over. Karin emerged from the room feeling a little dazed, but overall pretty good about how things had gone. 

“Yuzuki Kurosaki.” 

Karin watched her sister stand. As they passed each other, she reached out and squeezed Yuzu’s shoulder. 

“Knock ‘em dead.”

* * *

She felt like a mess. Fourteen pairs of eyes were fixed on her, leaving Yuzu to wonder frantically if there was a stain from lunch on her uniform, or if her sash was tied properly, or if her hair was actually a mess. She could feel a tiny tremor running through her whole body—it probably wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. 

She folded her hands, clasping them together in front of her to make the shaking less obvious. She hadn’t been instructed to bow before the assembled, but it seemed rude not to, so she did. Plus, that was a few seconds where she didn’t have to decide what to do with her eyes. As soon as she came back up, she fixed them on the table they sat at, rather than on any one face in particular. At least until the talking started.

“I understand you achieved shikai after a period of only seven months.” The speaker was Sasakibe-fukutaichō—she’d borrowed old copies of several _Seireitei Bulletins_ from the library so as to have faces to go with the names she’d learned in history class. 

Yuzu inclined her head. “Yes, sir.”

“That’s quite the accomplishment; I believe it marks the fastest such a feat has ever been accomplished.” Sasakibe was upright in his chair—it was a bit difficult to tell what he thought of his words. 

A quick glance of the rest of the line yielded her more information. Apparently, not everyone had known this, or at least not that she was the person in question. She could not blame anyone for their surprise. Yuzu certainly hadn’t expected it either. 

“I believe so, Sasakibe-fukutaichō.” There was no point in denying it, even if the sudden increase in scrutiny was palpable. She tightened her hands around each other. 

“May we see it?”

“Of course.” Yuzu forced her fingers to relax, letting her left hand fall to her side and drawing her zanpakutō with her right. 

“ _Sakisomero, Hasuhime_.” The words were only a murmur—almost lost in the crystalline ring that accompanied the release. Carefully, she set the end of the shakujō’s pole down on the ground, rotating her so that she faced forward. 

“How lovely,” said Ukitake-taichō, smiling mildly at her. 

There was a murmur or two of agreement, though Yuzu couldn’t say from whom. She returned Ukitake’s smile with a tentative curl of her mouth. 

“What can you tell us about your zanpakutō?” Sasakibe asked. 

Yuzu pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Well, she’s a kidō-type. I’m not really sure if she has any techniques, as such, but I’ve figured out that if I cast kidō with her released like this, I can channel the spells through her for additional effects. For example, I can cast _Shakkahō_ in the shape of a bolt or whip instead of a sphere.”

“And you don’t use a named technique to do this?”

She shook her head. “No, sir. I suspect it’s a property of Hasuhime herself, but I can’t be sure. She is… reluctant to part with the secret.”

“I see. Thank you, Kurosaki-kun. You may seal her.”

Yuzu did so, tucking the tantō back into her sheath. When the time came for questions, Suì-Fēng-taichō went first. 

“Does your zanpakutō always make noise like that?” 

Yuzu nodded, a touch wryly. “Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid so.” She moved her hands back in front of her, holding her back straight and trying not to hunch or cower. 

Kira said he had no questions, but he did give her a nod. She hoped that only meant he had whatever information he wanted; not that she’d failed by some metric already. 

Unohana-taichō tilted her head to the side. “Have you any interest in learning to heal, Kurosaki-san?”

“I do.” It was the truth—they didn’t teach such kidō at the academy, presumably due to the risk inherent in failure. That was frightening, in its way, but… Yuzu liked the idea of being able to use her skills for something straightforwardly helpful that way. 

The fifth chair was empty. Yuzu supposed that the Fifth wouldn’t be taking anyone new this year. They hadn’t for the last two, either, according to academy record. She moved her eyes to the next person in line and tried not to flinch.

Byakuya Kuchiki exuded aloof nobility. Yuzu could scarcely believe he and Rukia were related, by blood or otherwise. Truthfully, it was that cool detachment that intimidated her the most, more than Suì-Fēng’s pointed scrutiny or even Zaraki-taichō’s reputed love of violence. Perhaps, if this were half a year ago, she wouldn’t have even been able to look at him. But it wasn’t half a year ago, and Yuzu forced herself to make eye contact. She couldn’t read his face—not even to glean the little things she’d detected about the others. 

“Which law of Soul Society is most important, aside from the first?”

“The dictum against murder,” she said softly.

“Why?”

Yuzu swallowed, locking her elbows against her sides to still her desire to fidget. She was very grateful for the loose sleeves of the uniform right then. “Life is sacred,” she said. “It seems to me that the reason the balance is so important is that maintaining it allows for the possibility of life at all. Taking a life should always be difficult. Taking a life without justification… that is abhorrent, and I think a custodian of balance should always remember what they’re really protecting.” 

He didn’t react much to that, simply dropping his eyes and writing something down on his parchment with a slight scratching sound. 

Komamura-taichō demurred verbally. She thought maybe something about his voice was roughened, but with the helmet, she really had no idea.

Ise-fukutaichō asked her what quality she thought was most important in an officer. 

Yuzu thought that interviews were every bit as terrifying as she’d been led to believe. 

“I think—compassion,” she replied. “It’s important to be able to motivate people to be stronger, and to be able to make difficult decisions when the time comes. But I think one thing that helps with all of it is being compassionate. If you really understand what people are going through—and if they know that you _care_ —then… everything else has better results. Building trust on a foundation like that strikes me as the most effective method.”

“How would you feel about being in a division with no captain?” Hisagi asked the question bluntly, arms crossed.

At least it was an easy one to answer. “I expect it would be more work,” she replied, “but I wouldn’t mind.”

Hitsugaya, Zaraki, and Kurotsuchi all shook their heads, skipping the sequence down to Ukitake. 

“Do you consider yourself a prodigy, Kurosaki-kun?”

“What—no!” Yuzu bit her tongue, barely resisting the urge to clap a hand over her mouth. Her first thought had been that someone must have intimated to him that she thought so, and she certainly did not. 

But Ukitake’s eyes were gentle, and the corners of his mouth turned up. “Would you like to explain your answer?”

He offered her a chance to recover; she took it gratefully. 

“That is… um. I don’t know what the technical qualifications for that word are, if there are any. But I think the connotation of it would imply that I have some kind of special merit, or that I deserve to be treated in a way that is different from any other new squad member. Both implications, I would deny. I have…” she hesitated. “I have worked very hard, sir. I have tried to become a little better each day—to grow just a bit more. I think that on most days, I have succeeded, even if the ‘bit’ was very small. I will continue to strive for that. But if my accomplishments thus far are… meritorious in any way, that is the merit they have.”

Ukitake’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “I would say there’s a little more than that, Kurosaki-kun, but humility is an admirable trait.”

Next to him, the Grand Kidō Chief, Hitomi Kogo, straightened. 

“Are you committed to the Gotei 13 as your next career step?”

Yuzu glanced back down the row of captains and vice captains. She slowly shook her head. “Not at this point, no.”

Kogo wrote something down, and Yuzu was dismissed.

* * *

“Two swords in shikai?” 

Sasakibe blinked, a few quick strokes of his brush leaving lines of black ink on his page. “What can you tell us about them?”

Uryū lowered Yorugen, holding the blades loosely. They crossed in front of his legs. “Not a lot,” he admitted. “I’m not actually sure what type he is. He seems to be intent on getting me to master the forms before telling me anything else.” Given how different hook sword forms were from the usual academy curriculum, he didn’t think it was a bad idea, really. 

With permission, he resealed the blades into a single wakizashi and sheathed it, adjusting his glasses with his other hand. None of his inward awkwardness made it to the surface of his demeanor—he refused to show weakness in front of these people. 

Even if he was willing to admit it to himself. 

Suì-Fēng took the first question. “How do you feel about assassinations?” she asked, arms crossed and eyes narrow. 

“If I’m going to kill someone, I’d prefer they know exactly who did it,” Uryū replied just as bluntly. 

She frowned, but nodded anyway. 

“What kind of squad atmosphere would you prefer?”

Kira’s query was so innocuous that it threw Uryū for a loop. Come to think of it, though… he really hadn’t bothered to give the matter any consideration. 

He still wasn’t entirely sure he was still going to _be_ here in a week, let alone care what his assignment turned out to be. 

“One where people aren’t too pushy,” he said at last, lifting his shoulders. 

He was pretty sure Kira was trying not to smile. 

Unohana passed her turn. When the sequence reached Kuchiki, he too shook his head. 

“I am confident that I know what kind of person you are.” He didn’t make clear what the valence of that assessment was. 

Komamura, captain of the Seventh, considered him for a moment through the eyeslit of his helmet. “You were once a ryoka,” he intoned—either the helmet’s acoustical effects were granting him unintentional gravitas or he was doing it on purpose. “Could you be loyal to the very same thing you once so casually defied?”

Uryū stiffened, then frowned. “Soul Society does not command my loyalty simply because it _exists_ ,” he replied sharply. “A trait of mine which has proven to its benefit, if I recall the course of events correctly.” He gritted his teeth, then forced his jaw to relax, exhaling heavily. “But nothing about my defiance, as you put it, was casual. I thought my actions through and I did what I believed was right and necessary. As I will always do.”

“So then why are you here?” Hitsugaya picked up the thread of the conversation, but it sounded like the question he’d wanted to ask all along. 

He squared his shoulders. “Because some people I care about have taught me that imperfect does not mean unsalvageable. I will never be loyal without question. But I don’t think most of you are that, either. I’m here because I care about what all of you supposedly care about—maintaining balance. Protecting the people in both the living world and this one. Because there are things in both I could not stand to lose, and I recognize that, for all its flaws, the Gotei 13 is the best chance any of us have to preserve those things.”

“Would you consent to be the subject of scientific research?”

The non sequitur immediately drew his attention. Uryū’s eyes snapped to the woman who’d asked it. She’d been writing nearly constantly the entire time—he’d thought she must be going through other notes, perhaps uninterested in him specifically. Apparently not.

His brow furrowed. “No.” 

The only scientist he’d consider letting anywhere near him was probably better than anyone they had here anyway.

She didn’t even look disappointed. He wondered what that was about.

Ukitake allowed a moment’s recovery from that exchange before breaking in with his own query. “Ishida-kun, do you still consider yourself a Quincy?”

“Yes.” He’d have thought that would be obvious by now. 

“What about a shinigami?”

 _That_ gave him pause. Perhaps he should have been expecting it. It was, after all, the elephant in the room. Uryū grappled with the question, not for the first time, and reached the inevitable answer, just as before.

“…I believe that label is also accurate, yes.”

* * *

“Guys, I got your mail!” Karin ran through the front yard of her house, shouldering open the door impatiently. 

Uryū and Yuzu were both sitting in the living room, having tea with the old man. She threw the heavy white envelopes on the table and plopped down on the fourth side of it, turning hers over and over in her hands. 

All of them were thick, evidence of lots of paper inside. Karin ripped hers open at the top, shaking out all of the documents into a pile. The sheet on top looked to be a summary of everything else in the packet—that was convenient.

_Kurosaki, Karin:_

_Third Division, 20th Seat_  
_Sixth Division, 18th Seat_  
_Seventh Division, 20th Seat_  
_Eighth Division, 20th Seat_  
_Ninth Division, 16th Seat_  
_Eleventh Division, Unseated_  
_Thirteenth Division, 20th Seat_

Twentieth was the common entry point for rookie officers, so the fact that most of the offers were for that was unsurprising. The Eleventh only let you advance of you beat the person in the seat above you, so even getting an offer was probably acknowledgement that they expected her to win _something_.

The offers from the Sixth and Ninth were interesting, though. She really doubted she’d made much of a favorable impression with Kuchiki, so she guessed Renji was behind that. Why Hisagi had offered her a sixteenth seat was beyond her. Maybe there was just an opening there or something. 

“Here, pass me yours,” she said to Yuzu, handing her own off to Uryū. “Easier than saying it.” She snatched the paper as soon as it was offered to her.

_Kurosaki, Yuzu:_

_Third Division, 20th Seat_  
_Fourth Division, 9th Seat_  
_Sixth Division, 20th Seat_  
_Seventh Division, 20th Seat_  
_Ninth Division, 20th Seat_  
_Thirteenth Division, 20th Seat_  
_Kidō Corps, 19th Seat_

“Ninth seat? Damn, Yuzu, Unohana must have really liked you.” Karin personally wouldn’t really be interested in joining the Fourth, but she wasn’t like some people about it—the Fourth was a legitimate division, and its members were a hell of a lot more useful to have around than some people.

“Ninth Seat in the Fourth?” Their dad broke into the conversation. “That’s not just any post; that’s the seat assignment of Unohana-san’s personal nurse-assistant.” 

“Um… I wonder why it’s vacant, then…?” Yuzu’s brows knit. 

The old man snorted. “Because she’s a demanding teacher, that’s why. When I was around, it seemed like she got a new Ninth Seat every couple months—if she had one at all.” He put his teacup down and crossed his arms. “It’s impressive that she offered it to you, Yuzu, but think carefully before you accept it.” 

“Well if the geezer’s actually being serious about it, I guess you’d better,” Karin put in, ignoring the subsequent bellyaching. 

The lists shuffled again, and she glanced over Uryū’s.

_Ishida, Uryū:_

_First Division, 20th Seat_  
_Sixth Division, 20th Seat_  
_Eighth Division, 20th Seat_  
_Eleventh Division, Unseated_  
_Twelfth Division, 20th Seat_  
_Thirteenth Division, 18th Seat_

“Huh. No Third or Ninth. I kinda thought those guys would make offers to all of us.”

Uryū folded open the first actual letter in his stack, lifting a shoulder. “It would be an extra imposition, I think, for me to be on a team without a captain. Riskier, since my reception in Soul Society is still mixed. I believe they are thinking first of their divisions’ stability.” Blowing steam from his tea, he took a sip. 

“Guess that makes sense. That jerk of a captain at the Tenth didn’t offer any of us a damn thing, though.”

Her dad coughed; Karin decided it probably had something to do with him. At least in Yuzu’s case. It was possible that the current captain just hated her on principle. She wasn’t too fond of him, either. 

“Well… let’s see what the offer letters look like, I guess.”

* * *

“What exactly am I supposed to do here?” Uryū held up his list in front of the projected screen, scowling. He was sitting in the room he borrowed from the Kurosakis for the moment, but only three days remained before he was supposed to be choosing a _barracks_ to live in. 

“Well… probably don’t go to the Twelfth.” Urahara grinned, as though it were all some kind of joke. 

Uryū’s scowl deepened. “I’m serious.”

Onscreen, the shopkeeper sighed. “It looks to me like your choice has two stages: first, do you want to stay or leave?”

He adjusted his glasses. “I don’t… I’m not sure I see clearly with regard to the issue.” 

“Oh?” Urahara folded his arms into his sleeves. “Why not?”

“I… there are people here who make considering this objectively… harder. People I would miss, if I left.” It was surprisingly easier to admit this time. 

The difference between having people here he would miss and missing some of those he’d left in the living world was that he was certain he would _see_ his friends in the living world again. If he left Soul Society, taking his zanpakutō with him… it was hard to say exactly what the consequences would be. 

“Sounds like you see plenty clearly to me, Ishida-kun.” 

Uryū ran a hand down his face. “But is it really the best thing to do? What about Aizen?” 

“Look,” Urahara tipped his head back, shifting slightly in his seat. “The offer to get you out of there doesn’t expire. If it becomes necessary later to remove you, we can still do that. But it’s a one-use thing. If you leave now, you probably won’t be allowed back until you’re _really_ dead, you understand?” There was something like nostalgia in his tone.

Uryū hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.” It was, in a way, a relief. Perhaps it didn’t all have to be an elaborate lie, in the end. Too much of it was already truth anyway. 

“But what division do you think is best?”

Urahara laughed. “That, I think you’re going to have to figure out on your own.”

* * *

“Hey monkey.”

“Have I mentioned how I hate that you’ve graduated? No respect…” Renji turned to regard her anyway, lifting an eyebrow. 

Karin rolled her eyes. “I didn’t respect you when I was in class either.” 

He gave her a flat look. “Yeah, thanks for that. Now what is it? I have things to do.” 

Rukia made a sound that suspiciously resembled a snort. “No you don’t. You were just talking about how you finished your work early.” 

Karin grinned. Renji glared at Rukia, then sighed heavily, his posture slumping. He made a ‘hurry up’ gesture with his hand—Karin decided to lay off him and get to the point, for now. 

“How do I decide which division to join? I didn’t think it was that important, but everyone makes such a big deal out of it…” If she thought about it, the emphasis did make some sense; she was still at a loss for how to make the decision, though. 

Renji blinked, his brows climbing his forehead. “You’re actually asking _me_ for advice?”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get too full of yourself. I’m interested in what Rukia thinks, too.” Karin crossed her arms. 

He sheathed Zabimaru, flopping down onto the grass. Rukia, who had not been sparring, followed with a little more grace. 

“Well, what are your options?”

“Ninth and Sixth. The Ninth’s offering me Sixteenth Seat.”

He nodded. “That’s a damn good posting, right out of Shin’ō. One thing that some people do is take whatever is the highest possible seat they’re offered.”

“It’s what you did,” Rukia pointed out. 

He grimaced. “Yeah. Kinda wish I hadn’t though. Uh… look. I can’t pretend I’m not biased here, because I had to work pretty hard to talk Kuchiki-taichō into that Eighteenth Seat thing, but… one point you have to consider is how things are going to look for you when you’ve got your feet wet and are looking for a promotion.”

“Yeah? And how would they look different between one and the other?”

Renji looked at Rukia. “You’re probably more neutral than me about this,” he said. 

She nodded. “Well, nii-sama’s division is known for being very… upstanding.” 

Karin was glad her canteen hadn’t made it all the way to her mouth by that point. “Upstanding? That sounds like a diplomatic way of saying they’re a bunch of stiffs. Isn’t this monkey their fukutaichō?” She jerked her chin at Renji. 

“Um…” Rukia blinked. 

“It’s not _that_ bad,” Renji said. “Kuchiki-taichō really, really likes following the rules is all. As long as you do your work on time and don’t cause problems, it’s not that different from most divisions.” 

“It might be a slightly stricter environment than some,” Rukia said. “But that can make your transfer prospects quite good. Few people turn down officers trained in the Sixth, because they’re trained very well. It’s easier to learn a few new quirks and eccentricities than trying to _relearn_ all the actual rules if you weren’t already following them.”

“Plus it’s a combat division.” Renji shrugged. “With an active captain. That means that when the time comes… we’ll definitely be in the middle of it.”

“And the Ninth?”

“Hisagi-fukutaichō is good at his job,” Rukia replied. “The Ninth had a shaky first year after Tōsen-taichō left, but they’ve recovered well. They’re a little more relaxed in terms of atmosphere, but generally their transfers have done well in other divisions.” 

Renji nodded. “We have a guy from the Ninth. But a lot of that division’s work revolves around the press. Which is fine if you like it—they still have time to train and stuff. But since there’s no captain, they’re less likely to get called up for missions outside the regular stuff.” 

“Ultimately, you should do what feels right to you,” Rukia said. “That might not seem like great advice, but honestly no one else can tell you how to choose. And as far as I can tell, the people happiest with their spots are the ones who went with their instincts.”

* * *

The evening before their decisions were due in, dinner at the Kurosaki table was a bit tense. 

Uryū himself still had no idea what he was going to do. Logically, he supposed the Thirteenth was the obvious choice—he liked Ukitake well enough, and it was also Rukia’s division, which meant he’d see more of a close friend. 

But he wondered if that fact was clouding his judgement. 

A knock sounded at the front door—Yuzu stood to get it before anyone else. Wondering who would be coming by at this hour, Uryū cocked an ear, but heard only a low masculine voice speaking, followed by Yuzu’s lighter tones. 

A few moments later, she returned to the dining room, a tall man in tow. The hat and pink kimono gave him away immediately. 

“Kyōraku!” Isshin set his meal down, standing to greet him. “What brings you by?”

The captain tipped his hat up by the brim, smiling amiably. “Good to see you, Isshin-san. I was hoping to have a talk with your houseguest, actually.” His eyes moved to Uryū and settled there—though the mild expression on his face never changed. 

“Well, that should be fine; you’re welcome to the engawa. But stay for drinks afterward, will you? I don’t get such illustrious company very often!”

“Illustrious company? Where?”

Uryū swallowed the last of his fish, rising to his feet. He had no idea _why_ Kyōraku was here; he hadn’t even attended the exams. But it would probably be apparent soon enough. 

They stepped out onto the engawa. Kyōraku leaned back against the wall of the house, folding his arms into the sleeves of his shihakushō. “Nice night,” he said, eyes fixed on the fireflies beginning to emerge into the garden. 

“I find it unpleasantly humid,” Uryū replied, adjusting his collar. 

Kyōraku chuckled, tilting his head and sending him a sidelong glance. “You don’t really go in for small talk, do you?”

“No.”

The captain’s smile took on a strange edge. “That’s a real shame. But it’s a good quality of yours.”

Uryū frowned. “Due respect, taichō, but I’m not sure you know much about me.”

Kyōraku dipped his head. “Maybe not,” he admitted. “But when you live as long as I have, you develop a sense for these kinds of things. You’ve been direct with me, Ishida-kun, so let me be direct with you, even though it’s really not my style.” He tipped his head back, looking out at the sky beyond the edge of the engawa. 

“I know why you’re really here.”

Uryū tensed, pushing off the section of wall he’d reclined against. Kyōraku regarded him with obvious amusement, his smile turning lopsided. 

“Yare, yare, Ishida-kun.” He sighed with exaggerated heaviness. “No need to be like that. You should relax more. I didn’t say I disapprove.” 

“Then what—?” 

“Obviously, I’m doing what a good captain should, and trying to get a new prospect to choose my division. You should be honored; I usually don’t bother trying to recruit men.”

Uryū fixed him with a flat look. 

Kyōraku sighed again, this time less theatrically. “Tell me, Ishida-kun. What do you think of Jūshirō?”

“Ukitake-taichō?”

The other man nodded. “The very same.”

“He seems to be a very agreeable personality, and is well-liked by his subordinates, to my knowledge.”

The captain’s head bobbed in time with the observations, then stilled. “He is both of those things. He’s also very protective of the people in his division. It’s part of the reason they like him so much.” 

“And…?” Surely, there was some other shoe about to fall here. 

“And if you joined his division, I have no doubt he’d be protective of you, too.” Kyōraku removed his hand from his sleeve and scratched at his short beard with it. 

“I thought you were trying to convince me to join _your_ division.”

“I am.” Kyōraku paused. “Now me, by contrast; everyone knows I’m the laziest captain in the Gotei 13. Nanao-chan runs the division by herself, with a few small exceptions. My men like me well enough, mostly because I don’t worry too much about it if they have fun instead of working all the time.”

“…This argument is not persuading me.”

Kyōraku smiled widely enough that it narrowed his eyes. “Not yet. But now look at this from the other side. Suppose you get yourself a promotion. Let’s say you move from whatever seat you start at to, eh, Fourth Seat. Maybe it happens quickly, because you’re talented and the upper ranks are sparse. What do you think people will say?”

Uryū did not ask why that would matter. It would—he could see it. Command structure didn’t work if the people in command weren’t respected. “…I suppose what they say would depend on the circumstances.” 

“I think you might be right about that, Ishida-kun. So suppose one of the circumstances is that you have a generous, agreeable, protective captain like Jūshirō. What do they say then?”

Uryū exhaled, letting himself lean back against the wall again. “I think it still depends, but… they might believe that I had attained my position because my captain was showing favoritism or simply being too generous.” 

“And if your captain was a lazy, good-for-nothing womanizer?”

“…then I must have done something obviously impressive. Or he left the decision to his fukutaichō.”

Kyōraku nodded. “Who could perhaps beat out Kuchiki-taichō for love of the rules. I don’t know if my Nanao-chan would save me from execution, even belatedly.” He appeared to consider the scenario for a moment, though he showed no signs of genuine distress about it.

“I think you may be misinterpreting her reasoning in such a case,” Uryū muttered dryly. 

Kyōraku’s eyes only crinkled further. 

“But by this logic, should I not simply join the Sixth? Or perhaps the First?” He couldn’t imagine anyone following the rules more stringently than the Sōtaichō himself. 

“Well, I admit the argument _does_ assume you would like to be promoted at some point. And not suffocate from boredom beforehand.”

“I will… consider it.”

Kyōraku straightened, placing a hand on his hat. 

“You do that.”

* * *

Yuzu sat on the engawa, running her fingers along the crease of the offer letter. One other still sat beside her. She’d narrowed her choices to two, but deciding between them was proving troublesome.

“There you are!” Her dad stepped out onto the porch beside her, closing the door behind him and sitting next to her. 

He had a dish of sake in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. He handed her the latter. 

“Thanks, dad.” Yuzu accepted the cup, setting it down next to her knee. 

“What’s got that look on your face, Zuzu?” He spoke more softly than usual, and his free hand found her back. He traced lazy circles between her shoulder blades in a soothing motion. 

She hadn’t heard the diminutive in forever—not since she was a child. 

“I’m not sure what to do,” she admitted. 

“Is this about what I said earlier?” He took a sip of the sake, then let his hand fall to rest on his thigh. “I didn’t mean to make you worry, you know.”

She sighed. “I know. It’s just… I think I would do well enough in the Kidō Corps. Kozu-sensei talked with me a bit about their duties, and the expectations for the lower seats. But…”

“But you don’t know if that’s what you want.”

“Mm. On the other hand, learning to heal sounds really great, and since I’d be in the Gotei 13, I know I’d still be able to practice with Hasuhime and my other skills. But Ninth Seat… it seems like too much. I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it.”

Her dad nodded thoughtfully, moving his hand from her back to her opposite shoulder. The weight was comforting. “There’s nothing wrong with being afraid,” he said. “I bet you were pretty afraid the first time you held your zanpakutō, huh? Maybe the first time you cast a kidō?”

She nodded. 

“Probably your exams were scary, too, right? I thought I was gonna die when I went in for my interview.”

Yuzu cracked a smile. “My body wouldn’t stop shaking. Some of them are very intimidating.” 

“No kidding,” he agreed, taking another drink. 

“But you want to know something, Zuzu? I bet you can do it. And I bet you’re brave enough to reach for what you really want.” He gave her a squeeze, and she leaned into his hold. 

“I don’t feel very brave,” she admitted into his sleeve. 

He propped his chin on her head. “You can’t be brave if you’re never scared.”

Yuzu let her eyes close, and inhaled deeply. Her dad always smelled like hospital sanitizer, laundry detergent, and mint toothpaste. He was right. She needed to be brave. If she wanted to grow, she had to give herself the room to do it.

“I love you, dad.”

There was a pause; she heard him swallow past something. When he replied, his voice was raspy.

“Love you too, kiddo.”

* * *

“Ready guys?”

They nodded. 

It was the day—decision day. Ōnabara was waiting for their forms. They’d all signed their names, folded their papers, and slid them into addressed envelopes. It felt much weightier than Karin thought it probably should, but she didn’t fight it. This _was_ important. It mattered. For all of them. 

The actual turning in part was pretty anticlimactic: Ōnabara just accepted the envelopes and asked them to confirm their choices before he wrote them in the school records. When they exited, he had three new entries in neat lines of script.

_Kurosaki, Yuzuki: Fourth Division  
Kurosaki, Karin: Sixth Division  
Ishida, Uryū: Eighth Division_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Habatake_ – 羽ばたけ – “Flap (one’s wings).” One of Hisaku’s special techniques. By drawing or swinging the blade and using her reiatsu, Karin can create an arc of flame and shoot it outwards at an opponent.
> 
>  _Yare, yare_ – やれやれ – There isn’t really a direct translation for this. It has a few uses—for example, when one sits down after a long day. It can be an expression of relief that way, but also one of fatigue, since it’s an onomatopoeia for the sound of deep breaths. Kyōraku uses it here to imply that Uryū’s tension is exhausting and he needs to chill out.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Well. That chapter was longer than I expected. It’s also the last one for this fic though, so there’s that. I really hope you enjoyed the ride; rest assured that the AU is far from complete. Next on my docket are a bunch of shorter fics set between the end of _The Butterfly Effect_ and the beginning of the as-yet-unwritten Winter War arc. There should be a variety of characters and subject matter. I’m taking suggestions if there’s anything in particular anyone wants to see. The first one will probably be about Byakuya and Rukia negotiating how to be a family, with a heavy dose of Hisana backstory. I’m excited for it. 
> 
> Anyway, being that this is the last chapter and all, I’d love to know what you thought of the story as a whole, so please consider dropping a line or several. :)
> 
> All of the internet cookies to the folks who have already reviewed. I try to respond to them, especially the ones with questions, but if I somehow missed you, I do apologize.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [for the fallen ones, locked away](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7869178) by [BiblioMatsuri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BiblioMatsuri/pseuds/BiblioMatsuri)




End file.
